Description
A perennial creeping dogwood, like its common name says, with leaves in whorls of 4 or 6, and typical small flower clusters that are surrounded by 4 large, white petal-like bracts. The fruit is an attractive red globe-shaped drupe, persistent and edible.
A beautiful ground-cover plant for shady, moist areas of the garden; it also needs an acidic substrate. Not easy to propagate from seeds though, therefore is quite a rarity. propagation by division is also possible.
Companion plants: Trientalis, Clintonia, Gaultheria, Coptis trifolia….
Folklore: Indigenous People chewed the fruit as a possible cure for insanity. Read more here: The cure for insanity.
Germination: difficult due to the hard endocarp; you can find on the net a lot of ‘folklore’ about the germination of this species ;)
One protocol that can be followed is this: provide a period of warm/moist stratification for 45 days; followed by cold-moist stratification for 140 days (ie. 4-5 months or 2 winters).
We can try to replace one winter period by doing the following: warm/moist stratification 1 month + GA3 treatment + cold/moist stratification (2-3 months = 1 winter).
I would say: sow outdoors in a corner of the woodland garden (shade, moist, acidic) and let nature take its course.
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