Calendar December 2015: Cotoneaster

December: Cotoneaster

The Warms of the Red in the Dark Cold Winter

(Cotoneaster horizontalis*, 
Order: Rosales, Family: Rosaceae, Genus: Cotoneaster )

The dark wet month, December, has come.  The winter solstice this year is on the 22nd of December.  In our garden there are still quite a lot of evergreen plants, but the leaves of the deciduous trees almost fell almost now.  Hydrangea's flowers turns smoky grey green from vibrant pink.

Now the cotoneaster's leaves in our garden are turning red after the berries did.  Though, the many leaves remain green this December.  Only some leaves  at the end of the branches became red.  Probably the temperature in the autumn and December has been relatively higher than usual.  Our thermometer at the window has shown rarely under 10 Celsius so far.

It was after Christmas last winter when I saw these strikingly red leaves of cotoneaster not only in our garden, more in the other front gardens and parks.

We can see this plant in cultivated areas.  Cotoneaster is non native wild plant from China.  The glossy thick tiny rounded leaves are lined tightly on each branches and a bunch of branches look like a fan.  The cotoneaster in our garden has a few berries every year, but it has often many berries.

Today I saw our cotoneaster had no berry more, but also no berry on the pyracantha as well.  They were obviously eaton up by robin, blue tit, wren and maybe sparrow.

When the red berries disappear, it's the time to put the bird feeder in our garden so that those tiny birds are not starving in the cold winter.

*I don't know how to distinguish the difference between cotoneaster horizontalis and cotoneaster atropurpureus.  Both have tiny glossy leaves and tiny berries which turn red in the autumn.  The further searching on the RHS plant finder for cotoneaster, the more confused I am becoming, because there are so many species.