Photo: peganum — CC BY-SA 2.0 · source
Survives zone 5 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Grown almost entirely as a winter-stem ornamental rather than for its fruit — the arching, biennial canes are coated in a thick, waxy white bloom that gives the plant its "ghost bramble" nickname, most dramatic once the leaves drop in autumn. The small purple-black berries are technically edible but widely described as unpalatable, so this is a structural garden shrub, not a fruiting crop; hard, near-annual pruning keeps a supply of fresh, brightly coated young canes.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–9
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Arching shrub 2–3 m tall and as much across, the canes white-bloomed in winter
- Light
- Full sun to partial
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Endemic to central and northern China, growing wild in forests, thickets and along riverbanks.
- Status
- Ornamental
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Vigorous — forms dense thickets to about 4 m tall and wide if left unpruned.
- Spacing
- 200 cm (79 in) apart — about 4 m² (43 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Pinnately compound leaves with several sharply toothed leaflets, smooth to slightly hairy above and densely white-woolly beneath, carried on brown-to-reddish, hairless, waxy-white stems armed with sparse prickles.
- Root system
- A perennial woody rootstock that sends up new biennial canes each year — the plant itself does not persist above ground cane by cane, but the root system does, resprouting reliably after the hard annual or biennial pruning the ornamental display depends on.
- Fruit description
- A small aggregate fruit under 1 cm long, purple-black at ripeness; technically edible but consistently described in the literature as unpalatable.
- Propagation
- By seed (cold-stratified, sown in a cold frame in early autumn), by softwood cuttings in summer, or by hardwood or root cuttings in early winter.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Undemanding — succeeds in any good, well-drained soil from sandy to clay and from acid to alkaline pH, in sun or semi-shade; good drainage matters more than fertility, since waterlogged soil invites root rot and fungal problems.
How it spreads. A biennial-caned bramble — new stems arise each year from the perennial rootstock, fruit in their second year, then die; left unpruned it forms a dense, thorny thicket up to about 4 m tall and wide, and has been used as a security/barrier hedge for this reason.
Growing tips. For the best silvery-white winter cane display, cut all stems back hard — to the ground or to about 30 cm — every one or two years in late winter before new growth starts; this sacrifices fruiting but produces the strongest, most vividly white new canes. The golden-leaved cultivar 'Goldenvale' holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit.
Grow journal
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