... When its a flowering quince thats when!!
Perhaps i should explain....
I have a shrub in my garden that ai bought some time ago as part of a collection of shrubs. The one in questionwas described as a symphoricarpos or snow berry. A shade tollerant deciduous shrub with a suckering habit, insignificant white flowers but unusual white berries (hence the common name!).
I decided to plant it in a shady border, basicaly to fill a gap and hopefully brighten the corner up with the berries.
A couple of years pased and nothing much happened, it seemed to be sulking as it wasnt growing much. Then just a couple of weeks ago i was in that part of the garden and spotted a small patch of red on or near the plant. on closer inspection it was a flower on the shrub. I thought 'thats nice' and thought nothing more of it of it, until i saw similar flowers on a shrub with similar leaves whilst out and about. I thougt 'that looks like chaenomeles (sp?) or flowering quince'.. Then it dawned on me that this could be the same as i had at home.
After some looking up of books and studying the plant in the garden i am convinced tha the plant sold as a snowberry is in fact a chaenomeles, and that I potentialy have a gem lurking waay in a dark corner of the garden.
The irony is that the nextdoor neighbours have a snowberry which has suckered under the fence right next to the mystery plant!
I am now wondering if it is worth moving to a more prominent position, since chaenomeles perform much better in a sunnier spot i beleive.
Sorry if this is a bit long winded.I suppose i am not really asking for advice on this (though I wont say no!), I really just wanted to tell you about it.
