The beautyberry variety Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldi ‘Profusion’ fruiting in the Witt Winter Garden at the Arboretum in December. (Photo by Niall Dunne)
BY REBECCA ALEXANDER
This regular column features Q&A selected and adapted from the Elisabeth C. Miller Library’s Plant Answer Line program. If you’d like to ask a plant or gardening question of your own, please call (206) 897-5268 (UW Plant), send it via the library website (www.millerlibrary.org), or email directly to hortlib@uw.edu.
QUESTION:
Can you tell me the name of all those shrubs with tiny, purple, marble-like fruits that grow along the walkway by the Intramural Activities building at University of Washington? Are they related to pepper? The fruits look like purple peppercorns! Are they edible?
ANSWER:
This shrub, which goes mostly unnoticed all year—until its dramatic fruit appears in fall—is beautyberry (Callicarpa species), most likely Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldii ‘Profusion’, a popular cultivated variety in our region and also a featured plant on the Miller Botanical Garden’s Great Plant Picks website (greatplantpicks.org). Beautyberries are graceful, medium-sized deciduous shrubs with arching stems grown mainly for their ornamental fall fruiting displays.
Based on the size and shape of the fruit, I can see why you might think the UW plants could be related to pepper (the seasoning). Taxonomists have moved beautyberry around, but for now it’s in the mint family, Lamiaceae, while pepper (Piper species) is in Piperaceae and requires a warmer climate (subtropics or hotter) than ours.
Callicarpa is not listed in any of the usual sources on seriously toxic plants, but that does not mean its fruit is safe or tasty for human consumption. Numerous sources say the fruits of American beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, native to the U.S. Southeast, are edible but that they have little flavor. According to Julia Morton, a botanist and author of “Wild Plants for Survival in South Florida,” “the rank odor of the plant makes nibbling of beautyberry bunches on the stem unpleasant.” Typically, the fruit is used to make jams and jellies.
Great Plant Picks notes that, “Most beautyberries require more than one shrub to set fruit, but ‘Profusion’ is self-fertile and will always produce a reliable crop of gorgeous berries.” You’ll find two lovely specimens of ‘Profusion’ growing in the Witt Winter Garden at the Arboretum, not far from a large cluster of Japanese beautyberry, Callicarpa japonica.
If you visit the plant throughout the year, or grow it yourself, you may learn to appreciate its subtle, pink flowers in early summer and the gently turning colors of its leaves in fall. American beautyberry has terpenoids in its leaves that have the added benefit of repelling insects such as mosquitoes.
‘Profusion’ flowering in the Winter Garden in July. (Photo by Niall Dunne)
QUESTION:
I have a Callicarpa with light-green leaves and very small purple berries in the winter. I don’t know its name, but I would like to find one that has dark-green leaves and dark-purple berries. Any ideas? Also, how late in the season could I put a shrub like this in my yard in South Seattle?
ANSWER:
It’s possible that your plant is Callicarpa dichotoma ‘Early Amethyst,’ which bears bright-green leaves and pale-purple fruits that are fairly small compared to those of other beautyberries. You’ll find specimens of this plant growing at the Center for Urban Horticulture, and they have performed well, according to UW Botanic Gardens Curator Ray Larson.
Callicarpa americana offers medium-green leaves and much larger fruits, ranging from purple to magenta to white. ‘Profusion’ offers a range of leaf colors over the season, emerging bronze in the spring, turning deep green in the summer, and rounding things out with golden purple in the fall.
For something even darker, you could try Pearl Glam™, a hybrid of Callicarpa dichotoma and another Chinese species, C. kwangtungensis. It combines profuse, bright-violet fruits with dark-purple leaves.
Japanese beautyberry, Callicarpa japonica, offers medium-green leaves that turn greenish yellow with a purplish cast in fall. Portland-area gardener and author Ketzel Levine writes about several types of Callicarpa in her book “Plant This!” and says that C. japonica has “metallic purple fruits, a color just a tad weirder than most, set off dramatically by autumn leaves often touched with pink.”
Levine says that ‘Profusion’ is the best performer in climates like ours, but her book came out 25 years ago, and growing conditions have changed considerably since then.
Fall color on a cluster of Callicarpa japonica bushes in the Witt Winter Garden.
Ray Larson says that all the Arboretum’s Callicarpa seem to be doing well, including the white-berried form of Japanese beautyberry, Callicarpa japonica f. leucocarpa. Besides the Witt Winter Garden, another good spot to see beautyberries is on the west side of Parking Lot 17, in the Pinetum, just northwest of Willcox Bridge. “A bunch of C. japonica f. leucocarpa grow there, and they look quite nice growing alongside some specimens of ‘Profusion’. The plant puts on a nice display some years, with its white berries. It should be more widely grown in our area.”
“We had some Callicarpa americana for a time in the late 1980s and early 90s,” says Ray. “But they didn’t last. They were sourced from pretty far south, so they likely needed more heat and summer moisture. Also, the species is difficult to source here, and it’s not as prolific in fruit as ‘Profusion’.
In general, Callicarpa does best in moist, fertile, well-drained soil in full sun to light shade. Water the shrub regularly during dry weather to help with fruit development. In our region, it’s generally best to plant shrubs and other woody plants in the fall. Don’t wait too late in the season because the ground might become too saturated or frozen. ❦
Rebecca Alexander is the former manager of Reference and Technical Services at the Miller Library, located in the UW Botanic Gardens’ Center for Urban Horticulture (3501 NE 41st Street, Seattle).
Fall color and berries of ‘Profusion’ in the Winter Garden. (Photo by Niall Dunne)
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This article is reprinted from the fall 2025 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin, our quarterly botanical and horticultural magazine. Published since 1937, the Bulletin is a benefit of Arboretum Foundation membership and features in-depth articles on the Arboretum collections and history, as well as general information of interest to plant lovers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Join/subscribe today.
