The Little Beautyberry That Could
July 18th, 2023
You’ve probably heard of the kids book “The Little Engine That Could” in which a never-give-up little locomotive pulls a long train over a tall mountain by believing, “I think I can, I think I can.”
This is my ‘Purple Giant’ beautyberry — the “Little Beautyberry That Could.”
It was one of our kids’ favorite bedtime books.
It seems I have a plant with the same kind of gumption of that little engine.
Call it my “little beautyberry that could.”
I planted a three-gallon ‘Purple Giant’ beautyberry shrub (Callicarpa ‘Kolmapurgi’) late last spring on a former weed-covered south-facing bank in the part shade of an inherited mulberry tree.
Beautyberries are usually pretty tough shrubs that I’ve seen do well in marginal soil and in the vicinity of big, aggressive tree roots. Besides, I like the plant’s main draw, which is BB-sized, metallic-purple berries that line the arching branches in fall.
This particular cultivar is supposed to have the biggest and most fruits of any beautyberry – and in an unusual dark wine-purple color, too. (It may or may not be a cultivar of our native beautyberry… different growers say two different things.)
‘Purple Giant’ didn’t do well right out of the pot, though.
Despite a fair helping of rotted leaves to break up the clay and reasonably regular water throughout summer, the plant went into fall looking less robust than spring.
It didn’t produce any fruits either, which wasn’t particularly alarming for a first-year transplant.
But come spring, ‘Purple Giant’ was a no-show. At first, I wasn’t too worried because beautyberries can die back to (or nearly to) the ground in a particularly cold winter. We had a couple of sub-zero nights right before Christmas that could’ve done that.
When Memorial Day rolled around and the branches were all still bare, snapping, and showing no bud activity even from low on the plant, that’s when I wrote it off as another casualty of winter. For being such a warm winter, my yard came out of it with way more mayhem than usual.
This is how ‘Purple Giant’ is supposed to fruit.
Credit: Plants Nouveau
Memorial Day is my traditional patience waypoint for determining whether a plant still has a chance to come back or is an official fatality. When nothing happens by then, I figure it’s a goner.
Frankly, I was on the lookout for a ‘Hartlage Wine’ sweetshrub to replace my poor, short-lived ‘Purple Giant.’ The only reason I didn’t do the switchout is because I couldn’t find a ‘Hartlage Wine.’
Then came the spirit of The Little Engine That Could.
A few days after the July 4 holiday, I noticed a side-by-side pair of light-green, tender shoots emerging from the base of the “dead” beautyberry branch stubs.
At first I thought it was a weed. Those seem to have no trouble growing out of dead plants.
Then I realized the shoots were beautyberry remnants – kind of like in a movie where the star returns from the dead after all hope is lost.
We’ll see if these shoots are the first step in a miraculous recovery or merely a tease that will die or get broken off by a curious rabbit.
The lesson is that plants sometimes surprise us with their will to live. They sometimes have life in those roots even when all of the top growth is clearly dead. And mustering new life apparently can take longer than we believe is possible.
That means we should give plants the benefit of every doubt and heap patience on top of patience before we take a shovel to them.
It makes me wonder how many non-dead (zombie?) plants have been dug out that would have pushed new growth if given just a few more days or weeks.
My “little beautyberry that could” has me rethinking my Memorial-Day cutoff. I’m now thinking that maybe even mid-July isn’t too optimistic.
Read George’s post on how transplanting a struggling plant may save it