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Morella pensylvanica
Also called Tallowtree, Candletree, Candlewood, Swamp candleberry, Tallowshrub, Small waxberry, Tallow bayberry
Northern bayberry is a deciduous shrub native to eastern North America, growing up to about 4.5 m, valued for its waxy berries and spicy-scented leaves. It tolerates poor soils thanks to root nodules that fix nitrogen.
Myrica pensylvanica, the northern bayberry, is a species of Myrica native to eastern North America, from Newfoundland west to Ontario and Ohio (locally endangered), and south to North Carolina. It is also classified as Morella pensylvanica.
Myrica pensylvanica is a deciduous shrub growing to 4.5 m tall. The leaves are 2.5–7 cm long and 1.5-2.7 cm broad, broadest near the leaf apex, serrate, and sticky with a spicy scent when crushed. The flowers are borne in catkins 3–18 mm long, in range of colors from green to red. The fruit is a wrinkled berry 3–5.5 mm diameter, with a pale blue-purple waxy coating; they are an important food for yellow-rumped warblers.
The berries can be used to make bayberry wax candles. American colonists boiled the berries to extract the sweet-smelling wax, which they used to make clean-burning candles.
Myrica arborea · Myrica caroliniensis · Myrica cerifera · Myrica rivas-martinezii · California Wax Myrtle · Myrica esculenta · Faya · Candle Berry · Oak Waxberry
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Myrica pensylvanica by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
