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Looking down on the ground

2010 September 16

PHOTO BY BETSY GREEN MOYER. Red berries and shiny evergreen leaves of partridge berry catch your eye in fall and winter.



By Ken Moore, Flora Columnist

Looking down on the ground last week along trails in Umstead State Park between Raleigh and Durham, I spotted numerous patches of partridge berry, Mitchella repens. Scientific names are always thought provoking. Many times their meanings are obscure. In this case, the names are logical. The genus name, Mitchella, honors colonial Virginia botanist Dr. John Mitchell, who corresponded with Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist responsible for developing the worldwide system for plant classification.

Most likely, Mitchell sent specimens of partridge berry to Linnaeus, who scrutinized them and placed them in his botanical naming scheme. Often times, Linnaeus, as do other botanical authorities, named new plants in honor of the discoverer. The species epithet, repens, refers to the trailing or creeping habit of the plant. And, indeed, partridge berry does trail along the ground, or when clinging to lichen and moss-covered rocky surfaces, like along Bolin Creek below Carrboro’s Adams Tract, presents itself as a vertical cascading mat of evergreen, opposite-leaved stems.

These mats, whether horizontal or vertical, are a joy to discover now through winter, with bright-red berries scattered along the creeping stems. Betsy Green Moyer’s image (photo above) from Paul Green’s Plant Book visually describes such a discovery. If you take a really close look at those little berries, you will find two tiny depressions, positioned as if two eyes are peering back at you. Those two eye depressions mark where two four-petal, tubular flowers sat upon their joined ovaries. Following successful pollination, those two flowers produced a double drupe that looks like a single berry.

OK, that’s enough botany.

In the late spring, around Mother’s Day, look for flowers on this prostrate little ground cover. Frequently there will be a berry or two lingering when flowers appear. Practice “belly botany” and get down low enough to see the paired, frilly, double-white flowers. The flowers are fragrant, so while on the ground you may as well give them a sniff. Thanks to Anne Lindsey for the unusual springtime image (above) of flowers and berry from Wild Flowers of North Carolina.

Partridge berry has an herbal heritage of medicinal use to ease the pain of childbirth and help with women’s ailments.

Paul Green’s description is especially engaging. “Partridge berry, Turkleberry or turkeyberry, sometimes called love-in-winter, pipsissewa, wintergreen, etc., is a shy little ground creeper which grows in the moist deep woods. It has delicate fragrant flowers which develop into single red berries that look like little drops of coral among the greenery. The deer especially like these berries and sometimes it is called deer-berry. The berries are good for all kinds of diseases, especially for diarrhea and rheumatism, so say the herb doctors.”

Other common names are running-box and two-eye-berry. It’s really simpler to remember just the official scientific name, Mitchella repens!!

Though it commonly grows in all kinds of forests, if you go looking for it you’ll probably not find it. Fortunately, it’s easy to identify, so you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you “happen upon it.”.

Email Ken Moore at flora@carrborocitizen.com.

PHOTO BY WILLIAM S. JUSTICE. Paired flowers of partridge berry produce a two-eyed red berry-like fruit.

PHOTO BY DAVE OTTO. You must practice ‘belly botany’ to see the hairs of partridge berry flowers.

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