evergreen Chinese bramble

Survives zone 7 through 9

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Small red berries; mild — grown mainly as groundcover.

Hardiness

Zone 7–9

Habit

Groundcover

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer

Mature size

Evergreen groundcover 20–40 cm tall, spreading widely

Light

Partial to shade

Soil pH

6.0–7.0

Environment

Montane

Native range

Mountains of central and western China; introduced into Western gardens around 1900

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–3 yrs

Growth speed

Fast

Spacing

150 cm (59 in) apart — about 2.3 m² (24 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Large, rounded, coltsfoot-like leaves 15 cm or more across, glossy dark green above with a felted pale-brown, subtly metallic underside

Root system

Shallow and wide-creeping, with the trailing canes rooting wherever a tip touches soil — the plant advances as a rooted mat rather than from a single crown. Easy to propagate and correspondingly hard to confine.

Fruit description

Small orange-red aggregate berries in late summer, following white five-petaled flowers; edible but mild/modest in flavor, and attractive to bees, butterflies, and birds

Propagation

Primarily rooted stem/softwood cuttings; also by seed, air layering, or grafting

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.