{"title":"Ardisia (Marlberries)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eArdisia japonica\u003c\/em\u003e has a collector's history most groundcovers cannot match. The plant was a favorite of Edo-period Japanese enthusiasts, who selected and traded variegated forms with the same intensity later given to camellias, and named forms like 'Hakuokan' and 'Hinode' come down from that tradition. In the garden the plant runs as a low evergreen mat in shade, holds red berries through winter, and stays where put.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eArdisia crenata\u003c\/em\u003e is a different proposition and needs an honest word. The coral ardisia is beautiful, an upright evergreen with lacquered red fruit that lights up deep shade, and birds carry the seed far. In Florida and along the Gulf the plant has escaped into woodlands and is listed as invasive, and several states now regulate the species. Grow the coral ardisia in a container, or somewhere seedlings can be pulled, and check your own state list first. Gardeners in the upper South, where winter keeps the plant in check, have an easier decision.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"ardisia-japonica","title":"Ardisia japonica","description":"\u003cp\u003eLow, shining, and quietly territorial, \u003cem\u003eArdisia japonica\u003c\/em\u003e travels on slender underground stems and knits a dense evergreen carpet eight to twelve inches high across ground that most groundcovers refuse. The leaves are gathered in loose whorls near the tips of the stems, glossy and finely toothed, dark enough to read as almost black in deep shade. Small white to pale pink stars nod beneath the foliage in midsummer, easy to miss unless you kneel, and the berries that follow ripen coral red and hang on through winter, often still bright when the next year's flowers open.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe genus name comes from the Greek \u003cem\u003eardis\u003c\/em\u003e, the point of an arrow, for the sharply tapered anthers that give each little flower a dart at the center. \u003cem\u003eJaponica\u003c\/em\u003e is straightforward enough, though the true range runs wider than the name suggests, from Japan through Korea and into eastern and central China. Western gardeners have grown marlberry since the nineteenth century. Japanese growers have been at the work far longer, selecting a remarkable run of variegated and crested forms with names like 'Hakuokan' and 'Chirimen' that circulate among collectors as objects closer in spirit to bonsai than to bedding.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Chinese medicine the dried whole plant is \u003cem\u003ezi jin niu\u003c\/em\u003e, and in the folk tradition of southern China the same herb answers to \u003cem\u003eai di cha\u003c\/em\u003e, roughly \"short ground tea,\" a name that catches both the low habit and the way the leaves were brewed. Practitioners have long turned to the herb for stubborn coughs and chronic bronchitis, to move phlegm and to break up what the tradition calls blood stasis. Modern chemistry has found bergenin, gallic acid, and a run of quercetin glycosides in the leaves, and laboratory work on the respiratory claims is ongoing rather than settled.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMarlberry belongs in the difficult places: the dry shade under a live oak, the strip beside a north foundation wall, the slope where liriope has started to look tired. Give the plants shade or high filtered light, soil with enough body to hold moisture, and steady water through the first two summers while the rhizomes find their bearings. Growth is slow at the start and then relentless, roughly six inches of spread a year, which makes marlberry a poor choice for anyone in a hurry and an excellent one for anyone building something permanent. Pair with hellebores, autumn fern, and \u003cem\u003eDanae racemosa\u003c\/em\u003e for a shade planting that never goes bare. One honest caution: Japanese ardisia has escaped cultivation in north Florida and carries a Category II listing from the Florida Invasive Species Council, so gardeners in that corner of the state are better served by partridgeberry or shiny blueberry.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057811230835,"sku":"ARDI-JAPO-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-271.jpg?v=1720136406"},{"product_id":"ardisia-japonica-hakuokan","title":"Ardisia japonica 'Hakuokan'","description":"\u003cp\u003eArdisia japonica 'Hakuokan' is a jewel of the Japanese shade garden, a low evergreen groundcover whose small, glossy, leathery leaves are edged in a clean band of creamy white. The green species, called yabukoji in Japan and marlberry in English, has grown wild in the woodland understory of Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan for ages, spreading quietly by underground runners into knee-low colonies. 'Hakuokan', a name that reads roughly as white royal crown, is a variegated selection prized by collectors, slower and more compact than the plain species and all the more luminous for the pale margin that catches light in a dim corner.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlants like this one carry a long cultural history. From the Edo period, Japanese growers cultivated an art of koten engei, the classical horticulture of collecting foliage variants, natural sports, and variegated forms, displayed in special pots and ranked in printed lists modeled on sumo. Yabukoji stood among the traditional subjects of that pursuit, and named variegated forms such as 'Hakuokan' descend from exactly that connoisseur's eye for the beautiful mutation. The bright red berries that follow the flowers have long earned the plant a place in Japanese New Year arrangements as a token of good fortune.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn midsummer, small star-shaped flowers of white blushed with pink nod in little clusters beneath the leaves, followed in autumn by round, coral-red berries that hold through winter against the evergreen foliage, one of the plant's quiet pleasures. The genus name Ardisia comes from the Greek ardis, a spear point, for the sharp tip of the flower's anthers, and japonica marks the plant long associated with Japanese gardens. Low, slow, and evergreen, 'Hakuokan' asks little and gives a long season of interest.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeyond the garden, the green species holds a serious place in Chinese herbal tradition, where the whole herb, known as zi jin niu, was gathered and decocted chiefly for coughs and complaints of the lungs, a use modern laboratories have traced to a well-studied compound called bergenin. In cultivation, set 'Hakuokan' in part to full shade, in moist, humus-rich, acidic soil, as a refined groundcover for woodland beds, shaded borders, and Japanese-style plantings, where the white margins lift the gloom. Pair the plant with ferns, hostas, and hellebores, shelter the foliage from hot afternoon sun, and let the slow colony knit itself together over time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057811329139,"sku":"ARDI-JAPO-HAKU-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Ardisia_japonica_Hakuakan_NC.webp?v=1784297451"},{"product_id":"ardisia-japonica-hinode","title":"Ardisia japonica 'Hinode'","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eArdisia japonica\u003c\/em\u003e 'Hinode' is a variegated form of the Japanese marlberry, each glossy, dark green leaf marked with a broad gold band down the center. Low and slowly spreading, this evergreen carpets shaded ground at eight to twelve inches, lit by the gold variegation and dotted in fall with bright red berries that hold into winter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to the woodlands of Japan, China, and Korea, marlberry has long been grown in East Asian gardens and is, in its plain green form, one of the fifty fundamental herbs of traditional Chinese medicine, the whole plant used for coughs and chest complaints. 'Hinode' is grown for beauty rather than use, a refined, compact selection prized for the contrast of gold leaf and red fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlant the variegated marlberry as a slow evergreen groundcover or edger in shade to part shade, in moist, well-drained, slightly acidic soil, lovely along a shaded path, at the front of a woodland bed, or in a container. Even and steady moisture suits the foliage best, and the gold-banded leaves brighten a dim corner year round.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057811558515,"sku":"ARDI-JAPO-HINO-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1079.jpg?v=1720136416"},{"product_id":"ardisia-crenata","title":"Ardisia crenata","description":"\u003cp\u003eA small shrub built like a miniature tree, \u003cem\u003eArdisia crenata\u003c\/em\u003e rises on one clean stem to two or four feet, occasionally six, and carries a single tier of glossy dark green leaves at the top like a parasol. The leaf margins are thick and scalloped, waved just enough to catch the light along the edge. Small white to pale pink stars hang in nodding clusters in late spring, lightly scented, and are followed by the reason anyone actually grows the shrub: tight bunches of round, lacquer-red berries that hold from autumn straight through to the next flowering.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCrenata\u003c\/em\u003e means scalloped, for those wavy leaf edges, and the edges reward a close look for a second reason. A line of small swellings runs along every margin, and inside those nodules lives a bacterium, \u003cem\u003eCandidatus\u003c\/em\u003e Burkholderia crenata, which the shrub cannot live without and which lives nowhere else. The bacterium manufactures FR900359, a cyclic depsipeptide first isolated from this species in the 1980s and now one of the most valued tools in pharmacology, a selective inhibitor of Gq proteins used in laboratories worldwide. Very few garden plants arrive with a resident chemist.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Chinese medicine the dried root is \u003cem\u003ezhu sha gen\u003c\/em\u003e, cinnabar root, named for the color of the fruit. The tradition uses the root to clear heat and to break blood stasis, to dispel wind and damp, and above all for the throat; among the Miao people of southwestern China the root is regarded first as a throat remedy, and Zhuang practitioners work with several relatives in the genus for related complaints. The chemistry underneath includes triterpenoid saponins alongside the celebrated depsipeptide, and those same compounds make the plant genuinely toxic to grazing livestock.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden this is an outstanding container subject and a striking evergreen for shaded southern beds, where the berries carry December and the habit stays architectural without any pruning at all. Give part to full shade, moist well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter, and shelter from hard freeze. Now the necessary caution, which is not a small one: coral ardisia has naturalized aggressively across the Gulf South, was declared invasive in Florida in 1995, and was elevated to noxious weed status there in 2014. Birds carry the seed into hardwood hammocks, where dense stands crowd out the native understory. Grow this one in a pot, or in a garden well outside the Gulf Coastal Plain, and check your state regulations before ordering.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057811689587,"sku":"ARDI-CREN-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1601.jpg?v=1720136419"},{"product_id":"ardisia-crenata-alba","title":"Ardisia crenata 'Alba'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe uncommon white-berried form of coral ardisia, \u003cem\u003eArdisia crenata\u003c\/em\u003e 'Alba' is a small, neat evergreen shrub of glossy, scallop-edged dark green leaves, hung in fall and winter with clusters of round white berries in place of the usual coral red. The pale fruit and shining foliage give a long season of quiet interest, indoors in a bright room or out in a shaded, frost-free garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to eastern Asia, coral ardisia is freely seeded by birds, and in the warm, humid Southeast, from Florida to Texas, the species has spread well beyond gardens into natural woods. Site this ardisia where stray seedlings can be pulled, or grow the plant in a container, and gather fallen berries where self-sowing is a concern. In cooler zones the question is moot, since hard frost cuts the plant back.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn its native range, the root of coral ardisia has a place in traditional Chinese medicine. Grown here for the glossy evergreen leaves and the unusual white berries, this is a handsome small shrub for shade, a woodland bed, a shaded patio pot, or a winter-bright houseplant.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057811820659,"sku":"ARDI-CREN-ALBA-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Ardisiacrenata_Alba_OPG.png?v=1731872986"}],"url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/collections\/ardisia.oembed","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}