The Christmas Berry – When a Plant Becomes Decoration

With a Christmas Berry in the garden, you get a colorful ground cover that adds vibrant accents to the flower bed during the gray season. The plant also serves as decoration in the bed.

Christmas Berries bring color to dreary days with their bright but toxic berries. Few other plants make such an effort in the fall and winter to be the perfect decoration.

The berries of the Christmas Berry form in late summer when small red or light pink berries emerge from the delicate calyx flowers. However, these so-called "berries" are actually not berries at all. They are thickened calyx petals that encase a thin-walled capsule fruit with a toxic seed. The Christmas Berry truly lives up to its name and should never be consumed. But they are still beautiful to look at! The evergreen leaves of the plant further highlight the berries.

There are plants that are better left in the flowerbed, but the Christmas Berry is definitely not one of them! Of course, it looks great in the flowerbed, adding color to the garden, but it also makes an excellent decoration. You don't even need to cut it or remove it from its pot. Christmas Berries are perfect for autumn and Christmas arrangements on the dining table, living room table, bookshelf, patio, or wherever you want to create a festive atmosphere.

The Christmas Berry is also known as Wintergreen. In Russian folklore, Wintergreen is considered a good spirit of winter, helping people through the cold season and giving them hope that spring will soon be around the corner. Did you know? The Christmas Berry is botanically called Gaultheria, named after the botanist Jean François Gaulthier.