Someplace Cool and Green and Shady

That's the place to look right now for some interesting and beautiful flowers.  I've been wanting to write about these flowers for awhile.  They are some of my favorites, and they are also ones that are often overlooked.  So it's time for them to have the spotlight!  Come with me to a cool and shady spot and we'll take a close look at Partridgeberry.

 This is the kind of place to look, but we're going to have to look closer.

In that photo, you can see two tiny white flowers.  Those are what we are looking for.  I expected to see more in this spot, because this is where I took this photo last November:

There are many teeny-tiny green berries, so by the fall I expect that spot will be bright with berries again.  But for now, we'll have to look elsewhere to see more flowers.

Here's a good place.... there are even still buds coming.  The buds and flowers are always in twos.  

Up close, they are adorably fuzzy!

Two flowers do not equal two berries though.  If both flowers are pollinated, they will grow into one berry with two "dimples" that show it came from two ovaries.  Look closely and you can see this in the next photo.

Here's a close up of a green berry from today.

 I think one of the reasons I like Partridgeberry so much is that I find that fascinating (yes, I guess I am often fascinated by 'simple' things... like two flowers making one berry!)  

Another reason is nostalgic.  I have good memories of my mother and I checking on the Partridgeberry plants my grandmother had transplanted into our woods on the farm where I grew up.  I was only 3 when my grandmother died so I don't remember her, but she was a great lover of plants and so I have memories connected to her through the plants she left behind.  The Partridgeberry she planted was always flourishing when my Mom and I looked for it on our walks to the woods, and I hope it still is.

Another memory I have of Partridgeberry is from my first job after I graduated from college back in the '70s.  At Christmas time, the nursery where I worked (which specialized in native plants) sold terrariums and berry bowls.  A berry bowl is a glass container filled with sphagnum moss and partridgeberries.  The terrariums were fun to make and we used some berries in them (see here for my post on making a 'winter garden') but the berry bowls were very tedious! (Imagine filling a jar with berries which each had to be placed just right in the moss so they would show from the outside).  Even now, I shudder to think of the partridgeberry vines that were pulled up to provide all those berries.  This is what they looked like. 

I think they are a thing of the past, which certainly would be good for Partridgeberry plants!

Partridgeberry is a beautiful plant all year long.  It gets high marks for its' evergreen foliage and bright red berries in the winter...

and if you take a walk in the woods right now to escape the hot sun, you may enjoy the pretty flowers.

It is very easy to transplant and since it's quite common it's not a problem to move a little bit for your own garden or woods like my grandmother did.   Here's a link to a good article about about Partridgeberry and how to grow it--  from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.