Plant · P-055

Northern Bayberry

Myrica pensylvanica

Northern Bayberry is a nitrogen-fixing shrub whose berries carry a waxy coating, scalded off and skimmed to make aromatic candles that snuff out without smoking. The fruit and leaves double as a bay-leaf substitute in cooking, and the white berries persist through winter, feeding songbirds long after most other food is gone. It is a coastal, acid-soil plant of dunes, bogs and pine barrens that needs a cold winter and a male plant nearby to fruit, and it spreads into colonies from a shallow, plate-like root system.