Rhodotypos scandens seed

LATIN NAME: Rhodotypos scandens

COMMON NAME: Jetbead

The jetbead is a handsome, upright, many-branched, deciduous shrub of the woodlands, and its fine, oval, sharply toothed leaves and its solitary, large, white, four-petalled flowers, followed by the small, round, glossy, jet-black berries, have made it a treasured and fine shrub of the garden. It grows as an upright, many-branched, deciduous shrub, reaching up to two metres or so, with the upright, slender, branching stems bearing the opposite, oval, pointed, sharply toothed leaves and, through the late spring, the solitary, large, white, four-petalled flowers, followed by the small, round, glossy, jet-black berries of the one or two seeds. It is a species of the flowering shrub in the rose family, and it is native to the woodlands of the eastern Asia, while it is grown as a treasured ornamental shrub, and it is known as the jetbead.

In the rose family it is the four-petalled oddity, a shrub that keeps the white flowers and the black beads of the old woodland gardens.

Scientific Research & Plant Biotechnology

The jetbead turns up in the wildlife-plant studies of the garden as one of the dependable berry shrubs, and the ornithologists who watch the garden birds have noted the small, glossy, jet-black berries among the autumn foods they take. The botanists have worked out its place in the rose family and its ties to the woodlands of the eastern Asia, and the horticulturists have studied its growth and its flowering for the mixed border. It is a shrub of the quiet, useful kind, giving the garden four seasons of interest, and the growers of the woodland shrubs keep it in their catalogues.

Ecological & Economic Value & Wide Applications

In the mixed border, the jetbead earns its keep all year. The solitary, large, white flowers feed the bees of the late spring, the glossy, jet-black berries feed the birds of the autumn, and the dense, leafy growth gives cover and shelter to the wildlife. It makes a fine shrub for the wildlife garden and the woodland edge, and it asks only for the moist, well-drained ground and a place in the sun or the part shade. White-flowered, black-berried and bird-friendly.

Mix the seeds into a bag of damp sand and keep it chilled in the fridge through a spell of cold weather, then sow them shallowly in pots of loamy, free-draining soil, keep them moist and set the pots in a sheltered, half-shaded spot, and the seedlings will come up steadily, each one a future cloud of white flowers and black beads.