Americanized Common Barberry Gardens Away From Cereal Grass Crops

Summary: Americanized common barberry gardens bear edible berries and beautify ground covers but bring wheat rust to cereal grass crops and bully native barberry.

common barberry's berries, flowers and foliage; Thursday, May 15, 2008, 08:42: Boronian, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Americanized common barberry gardens add authenticity to historic recreations of colonial and pre-independent North American cultures since they appear in garden descriptions in the 1600s and in Massachusetts weed designations in 1754.

Common barberry beautifies barren, compacted, disturbed, polluted, unbalanced soils but brings wheat rust into the life cycles of barley, oats and wheat and of native grasses. It carries the fungus Puccinia graminis over winters and causes severe reductions in cereal crop yields despite eradication programs by 19 states between 1916 and 1975. Hosting fungi, reducing yields and surviving eradication drive weed sanctions in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchwan in Canada and in New Hampshire in the United States.

Common barberry endures weed status in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Michigan with Japanese barberry while Florida excoriates as an invasive heavenly bamboo of China, Japan and India.

The bushy member of the Berberidaceae family of herbaceous and shrubby barberries fits seedling stages with oblong embryonic leaves two to three times longer than wide.

Cotyledons give way to the first leaf stage of long-stalked, rounded foliage with bristle-haired margins and with paired, prominent membranous structures called stipules at foliar bases. Alternate-arranged, mature, oval to elliptical, 0.79- to 2.36-inch- (2- to 6-centimeter-) long, 0.35- to 1.10-inch- (9- to 28-millimeter-) wide foliage hints of clustered looks along stems. It includes fine-toothed margins with 16 to 30 teeth, simple or three-branched spines at each foliar base and 0.08- to 0.32-inch- (2- to 8-millimeter-) long stalks.

Americanized common barberry gardens juxtapose for foliar contrasts such barberry relatives as heavenly bamboo, with lance-shaped, red-green leaflets, and Japanese barberry, with oblong or spatula-shaped leaves.

Common barberry knows only drooping, 0.79- to 2.36-inch- (2- to 6-centimeter-) long inflorescences, called racemes, with 10 to 20 flowers on same-sized stalklets off central stalks.

The central stalks lean from the axil angles of leaves with stems and load racemes with perfect, regular, yellow flowers, each 0.24 inches (6 millimeters) across. Common barberry's May through July bloom times mix one pistil, six petals, each with two glandular spots at the base, six stamens and six yellow-green sepals. Daytime openings of common and Japanese barberry flowers necessitate petal drops and sepal falls since nectaring, pollinating insects nab pollen from stamens free of sepal attachments.

Americanized common barberry gardens offer red berries from white-blooming heavenly bamboo and from yellow-flowering common barberry and Japanese barberry, nicknamed European barberry, jaundice-tree, pepperidge-bush and woodsour.

Common barberry, scientifically named Berberis vulgaris (common barberry), presents oblong, one- to three-seeded, red, sour-tasting, winter-long, 0.32- to 0.43-inch- (8- to 11-millimeter-) long berries on branches.
Temperatures between 55.4 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit (13 and 30 degrees Celsius) in the top 0.79 inch (2 centimeters) of soil quicken common barberry seed germination. Common barberry, described by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778), releases brown-black, oblong, shiny, wrinkled, 0.19- to 0.28-inch- (5- to 7-millimeter-) long seeds. Its seeds stay viable during cold storage, at temperatures between 33.8 and 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1 and 3 degrees Celsius), for a minimum of four years.

Americanized common barberry gardens tucked away for edible berries and scientific research in conservatories and courtyards no longer threaten cereal grass crops and North American barberry.

barberry shrub along River Road (New Jersey Route 175), Ewing, Mercer County, west central New Jersey; Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014, 11:31: Famartin, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

common barberry's berries, flowers and foliage; Thursday, May 15, 2008, 08:42: Boronian, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Berberis_vulgaris_munich.JPG

barberry shrub along River Road (New Jersey Route 175), Ewing, Mercer County, west central New Jersey; Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014, 11:31: Famartin, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014-12-30_11_31_17_Barberry_bush_along_River_Road_(New_Jersey_Route_175)_in_Ewing,_New_Jersey.JPG

For further information:

"Berberis vulgaris L." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/3500015

Dickinson, Richard; and Royer, France. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

Linnaeus, Carl. 1753. "1. Berberis vulgaris." Species Plantarum, vol. I: 330-331. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/358349

Weakley, Alan S.; Ludwig, J. Christopher; and Townsend, John F. 2012. Flora of Virginia. Edited by Bland Crowder. Fort Worth TX: BRIT Press, Botanical Research Institute of Texas.