Heath barberry

Description

Heath barberry is a low (up to ½ m high and over 1 m wide in the wild) shrub. The mature twigs have a warm brown color, with 3-branched, flattened, light brown spines (1-1½ cm long) under each short side shoot. The thick, narrow leaves are semi-deciduous, linear in shape (1–2 cm long), somewhat bluish-green, with entire, rolled-under margins, and pointed, often purplish tips that may later die-down to a light brown. The flowers are radially symmetrical (about ½ cm), occur late in spring individually or in small umbels, are yolk yellow hinting towards orange. As in other Berberis species, the tepals are set in four whorls of three to five and equal in shape and color, so it is difficult to separate sepals from petals. The filament has a tooth on each side near its upper end, where the anther is attached. The fruit is a globose, blue-black berry of about 7 mm in diameter