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shrubs_n_bulbs

Another Pyracantha

shrubs_n_bulbs
18 years ago

The branches are literally weighed down to the ground with berries.

{{gwi:64088}}

Comments (13)

  • jaceysgranny
    18 years ago

    Wow! What a fabulous display! The berries do look kind of red. Yours are orange too, aren't they? All of the ones I've seen have been orange.

    Nancy

  • shrubs_n_bulbs
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    This is a cultivar with red berries. They go straight from green to red. I have another where the berries go orange and then deepen to red.

  • Nushka_IA
    18 years ago

    Do your birds get drunk on the berries? Our robins get sauced.

  • shrubs_n_bulbs
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    The birds never manage to finish all the berries but they do try! I don't know if they get drunk, I've never seen my robin lying in the gutter :)

  • SwampRose_WA
    18 years ago

    Wonderful color for this time of year!

    I bet my birds would like this - maybe I should get some too.

  • shrubs_n_bulbs
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    I found this old picture of what it takes to produce all those berries. The white branches at the back are Pyracantha flowers.

    {{gwi:64089}}

  • carol23_gw
    18 years ago

    That's a gorgeous shrub in flower and in fruit! It's a bonus to have weeks ( or months) of color when the flowers are gone.

  • JoanMN
    18 years ago

    Wow, I've never seen anything like that before. Beautiful.

  • rosemariero
    18 years ago

    Do you have to prune yours to make it produce the flowers/fruit so concentrated on the branches? That is really neat! I like both pix of it!!

    I have a red-berried one as well. (Well, a deep orange-red.) My Pyracantha is half dead. A large part of it is gone (I cut it last year & miss it). The other half isn't faring well either. I still don't know what caused its decline. :(

    My Mama always told us the berries were poisonous. I've never checked into that. Is that why the comment on drunk birds?

    ~Rosemarie

  • shrubs_n_bulbs
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    I think the berries are toxic to use but the birds do love them. Pyracantha flower and fruit very heavily when they are happy and they don't need any special pruning or treatment to do it. But they are also prone to diseases, being in the rose family. This is a particularly disease-resistant cultivar but another plant I have would probably be dead of scab if I didn't spray it in spring. I'm going to replace it with another one of the strong ones, maybe with yellow berries.

  • jaceysgranny
    18 years ago

    I'll have to look for a red one. The geranium in front of the 2nd pic is gorgeous. What variety is it? I have 5 or 6 but they never grow. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Do they take a lot of water and rich soil? If so, I'm probably out of luck! ;-)

    Nancy

  • Nushka_IA
    18 years ago

    My parents' house (SF Bay Area) has several of them and I used to sample the berries as a child--despite having been told many times never to eat any red berry--and I survived. Of course, this might just mean they're only mildly toxic or I have some weird immunity. As to avian drunkenness, I always thought it was because the berries had fermented. Regarding pruning, my parents never prune theirs, but they do seem to bear heavily only every other year.

  • shrubs_n_bulbs
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    The Geranium is G. regelii, it is fairly similar to G. pratense. It is a species and will self-seed. I grew this one from seed two or three years ago. It is large and has large flowers, showy as you can see, but pretty much just for a few weeks in spring. They are quite tolerant, but do best with regular water and decent soil although this one is in a dry spot under a tree with fairly thin soil and just morning sun. They'd probably go semi-dormant in summer in Arkansas as the spring foliage fried, then flush out again later.

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