Category Archives: Beautyberry

Yellow Dog, Rosemallow, Beautyberry, Treat’s Rain Lily 2021-06-12

On our daily walk to the field, Yellow Dog encountered the first Swamp Rosemallow of the year, and perhaps the last Treat’s Rain Lily, while the Beautyberry remains in bloom.

[Halberd-leaf rosemallow, Yellow Dog]
Halberd-leaf rosemallow, Yellow Dog

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Dogs in their beautyberry bath 2020-10-22

Cleanly, those porch dogs are. After a walk, Honeybun stuck her head under the bathwater and paddled furiously. Nervous Nellie seemed more inclined to get a drink.

Yes, that’s beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, around the dog beauty bath.

[Honeybun and Nervous Nellie in the beautyberry bathtub]
Honeybun and Nervous Nellie in the beautyberry bathtub

Brown Dog and Yellow Dog watched.

-jsq

Beautyberry, boats, bananas, fire 2020-10-04

Around Okra Paradise Farms this morning.

[Beautyberry with boats, bananas, and wood fire]
Beautyberry with boats, bananas, and wood fire

Also grapevine. And I keep pulling up Continue reading →

Callicarpa, corn

Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) growing next to corn (Zea mays): two very tasty plants!

Callicarpa

This corn was planted by Terry Davis from seed kept in his family for 100 years.

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Beautyberry as insect repellant

Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, proven insect repellant!

Barbara Pleasant wrote for Mother Earth News April/May 2009, Beautyberry Banishes Bad Biting Bugs: Researches are finding evidence that beautyberry, long used as a folk remedy, really does deter bugs such as ants, ticks and others.

In 2006, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Products Utilization Research Unit in Oxford, Miss., found that extracts from beautyberry leaves could match DEET for repelling mosquitoes. The next year, experiments showed that the active ingredients from the leaves (callicarpenal and intermedeol) provided 100-percent repellency of black-legged ticks for three hours. In 2008, the four-person research team, headed by chemist Charles Cantrell in Mississippi and entomologist Jerome Klun in Maryland, published research that added fire ants to the list of pests repelled by essential oil distilled from beautyberry leaves….

Fresh green leaves, crushed and rubbed on people or pets, often repel insects for a couple of hours.

Looks like Charles L. Cantrell of U. Miss. has published several papers about this:

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Beautyberry flowers

Tiny white purplish flowers in a bunch:


Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) at Okra Paradise Farms
by John S. Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 June 2008.

Growing along the stems of a green-smelling bush: Continue reading →

French mulberry, or dwarf mulberry, becomes beautyberry

Due to discussion on facebook with Rihard Sexton after the previous post, I dug around a bit, and discovered that beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) is also known as dwarf mulberry, French mulberry, and Spanish mulberry, sow berry, and sour berry. That last is especially a misnomer, because its berries are not sour, they taste like flowers. And it turns out that beautyberry was mentioned in books before 1800, it was just mentioned as dwarf mulberry:

Further, William Bartram did mention it in his Travels of 1791, as French mulberry. Curiously, even though Google books does have Bartram’s book, ngrams doesn’t seem to show French mulberry for that date, but does show American mulberry. Even more curious, William Bartram’s father, John Bartram, corresponded with Linnaeus, the founder of modern botanical terminology.

The currently most popular name is beautyberry, which turns out to be related to the scientific genus name, Callicarpa: Greek kalli means beautiful, and Karpos means fruit.

The plant has all sorts of uses: Continue reading →