Box Thorn

Family: Solanaceae (Nightshade family)

Genus: Lycium

Species: barbarum

I picked up the last Heronswood catalog today--the one from 2005--to do a bit of plant research, and I was suddenly struck by how much we've lost. This is not an endorsement of a commercial enterprise, but a tribute to an institution whose founders respected plants in all their diversity and represented a world so far removed from mass-produced bedding plants that it seems to be in another universe. They found it not at all odd that people of a certain age would grow magnolias from seed knowing full well they were unlikely to live long enough to see the first blooms.

Another thing Heronswood represented to me was the tradition of plant explorers: naturalists traveling the world in search of unusual plants. Certainly there's much less world left to explore now than there was three centuries ago. And those explorers had no clue about which plants would suit home gardens in the early 21st century. Nor did they care. They were too busy making sense of the natural world by observing and collecting specimens and bringing them back to Europe for study.

One specimen they picked up in north Asia during the early to mid 1700s was given its European name--Lycium barbarum--by Linneaus. This medium-sized shrub was not showy enough to catch their attention with its good looks. But it grew everywhere--it was typical of the region's vegetation--it had characteristic purple flowers--anyone who had seen a potato flower would know the plants were related--and it had striking red berries used by the local people as food and as medicine. The explorers were part-time ethnobotanists long before the term was created.

So Lycium barbarum traveled to Europe, where it didn't make much of a splash. It was a rangy shrub with lowbrow looks and nasty thorns, reasonably pretty but very small flowers, and sparse crops of red berries that turned out to be not as tasty as others already available. The berries had been more plentiful and more flavorful in the shrub's native soil and--to the shrub--familiar conditions.

I'm sure you know the rest of this story. L. barbarum didn't do much for people but the birds liked the berries. Fast forward to our era and you'll find the shrub has naturalized in Britain and is listed as a noxious weed on two continents and in at least some parts of several states, including Montana and Wyoming. I don't know who brought it to North America, but surely it was a plant collector with a penchant for the unusual. Little did he or she--yes, there were several renowned plant collectors who were female--realize at that point that many of the more than 20 species in the Lycium genus are native to North America.

If you want to see L. barbarum growing wild in our state, you'll probably have to travel over the mountains. If you can settle for just one part of the plant--and dried out at that--you might check at your local health food store. The dried fruits of L. barbarum are sold as Goji berries. They're said to be nutritious--rich in vitamin C and other antioxidants. They also have anti-coagulant properties so if you need to avoid blood thinners, choose a different treat and skip the Goji berries entirely.

If you want to try growing your own crop, you can start Lycium barbarum bare-root or from seed. It's hardy here, but it may require more water year round than our climate provides. So find a spot in your yard that's both sunny and moist, where the soil is not overly rich. Be an optimist and provide space for a sprawling shrub that can grow to 12 feet and spread half as far. There will be no pruning to do, and no pests or diseases to worry about. Do harvest the berries before the birds do. You don't want them spreading the seed--if L. barbarum likes Montana, it may adapt to Whatcom County--and besides, you want to keep that vitamin C handy for you and your family through our long, gray winters.

If you had your L. barbarum up and growing, it would flower through August and by the end of September, you'd be seeing those berries. If I had one, it would be growing in the midst of the hedgerow that is my entire yard this month. Between the overgrown plants and its natural thorns, even the deer couldn't get to those berries. But if I bring a pie to the potluck, you can be sure it won't contain Goji berries. At least not this year.

~~~ Cheryll Greenwood Kinsley