Cotoneaster lucidus Seeds | Shiny Cotoneaster
LATIN NAME: Cotoneaster lucidus
COMMON NAME: Shiny Cotoneaster, Peking Cotoneaster
Plant Profile
The leaves are the plant’s signature and the source of the name: small, oval, dark green and strongly glossy above, so that a hedge catches light and looks wet in dry weather. Turn a leaf over and the underside is paler and lightly hairy. In autumn the bush turns orange and red before the leaves fall.
The fruit is a pome, the same structure as an apple in miniature, and it sets in generous clusters along the stems. Here it ripens to a glossy black and holds into winter after the leaves have gone. That black fruit is the clearest field mark of the species, since the great majority of cotoneasters carry red fruit.
Science & Biotechnology
Cotoneaster makes taxonomists uneasy. Many species reproduce by apomixis, setting seed without fertilisation, and a lineage that does that can fix a small difference and hold it, generation after generation, producing a swarm of near-identical forms that may or may not deserve species rank. Hundreds of names exist in the genus, and the list shifts with every revision.
Like many woody members of the rose family, cotoneaster tissue carries cyanogenic glycosides, with prunasin the compound most often recorded. Crush the leaves or the seeds and enzymes release hydrogen cyanide. The quantities in cultivated plants are small and the foliage is bitter, so grazing animals leave it alone, but the fruit is not food for people.
Uses & Benefits
Shelterbelt programmes in Canada and the United States worked from seed collected in the coldest parts of the native range, and those northern provenances are the plants that succeeded where milder material failed. The species also roots readily from hardwood cuttings, so a nursery can hold one good plant and multiply it vegetatively, keeping the glossy leaf and the autumn colour constant.
Micropropagation follows the pattern used across the rose family: shoot tips and axillary buds are established on a cytokinin-rich medium, multiplied as clusters of shoots, then rooted and hardened off. The technique matters most for clones that strike poorly from cuttings, and it produces a named selection in quantity without a seedling generation.
As a low clipped hedge it takes shearing twice a season and holds a sharp line. As a windbreak it goes in single or double rows, spaced about two metres apart. As a wildlife shrub it feeds bees in early summer and then holds black fruit for thrushes through the winter. Roadside plantings in cold regions use it for the same reasons.
Cotoneaster is susceptible to fireblight, the bacterial disease caused by Erwinia amylovora, which blackens shoots as if they had been scorched and can kill a hedge in one season. Because the bacterium also attacks apple, pear, hawthorn and mountain ash, do not plant this shrub tight against an orchard, and cut out infected branches well below the damage.
Growing from Seed
A shelterbelt species must survive a winter that swings far below freezing, tolerate drought in summer and recover from rabbit browsing. This one does all three, and it holds its lower branches near the ground, so a row closes into a windbreak instead of standing on bare legs. Its Siberian provenance explains the hardiness.
The seed sits inside a hard pome and needs a long cold spell before it will break. Clean the fruit, sow in a pan of gritty compost, and leave the pan outdoors or in an unheated frame for a full winter, protected from mice with a sheet of wire. A second winter is not unusual for this genus.
The seedlings lift two broad cotyledons, then the first true leaves. Prick them into individual pots once the first true leaf has expanded fully and the stem has stiffened, and grow them on in a frame for a year. Plant out when the young bush has reached about the height of a hand, spacing hedging plants roughly half a metre apart.
Our Take
This is the shrub I recommend to anyone who has lost a hedge to a hard winter. Plant it in full sun, shear it after flowering if you want fruit, and in late winter if you want the shape without the crop. In a cold-climate garden a Siberian legume such as Caragana arborescens makes an excellent windbreak partner, and Cotoneaster franchetii repeats the same fruit and autumn colour with grey-green leaves. Where rabbits are a problem, Pyracantha coccinea at the corner of the row will keep them busy elsewhere.
Related Reading
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