Snowberry (Symphoricarpus alba)
This is a very dense and spreading shrub, with attractive Spring foliage, pink flowers and white berries in Winter. The flowers are very attractive to bees and
Holly Blue butterflies. It was first introduced in 1817 from its home in North America and has been widely planted as game cover.
It is now thoroughly naturalised in hedges, scrub and woodland throughout the country, especially on damp soils.
The berries, which are borne in tight clusters and persist well into December, are extremely poisonous. Anyone eating them is likely to suffer severe vomiting. The juice is also a skin irritant that can cause dermatitis.
The berries are typically over 8 mm in diameter and so can be swallowed whole only by larger birds, such as Blackbirds. These birds benefit the plant by dispersing the two flattened seeds contained in each berry. Other bird species such as Greenfinches pull the pulp off in thin strips in order to eat the seeds. These strips of pulp rapidly turn brown and then seem much more palatable to species such as Blue Tits. Sometimes the Greenfinches drop the seeds and they are then eaten by Chaffinches.
Chaffinches often nest in the piles of Hazel trimmings that I tend to leave by the side of ground cover shrubs like Snowberry.
Snowberry tends to lose its leaves and become straggly in late Summer/early Autumn. It forms dense thickets which are good for ground-nesting birds. We have had no problems with this shrub. All in all a very good wildlife shrub, but definitely for the larger garden or private woodland.
Sends out suckers to form a dense thicket
Pink flowers in early summer followed by white berries in autumn