Cotoneaster

This is our best guess as to what this plant is which we got as cuttings from obssessive plant collector Marian Raitz's garden. High degree of confidence in our guess, by the way. Award of Merit selection, this is an impressive evergreen shrub with graceful branches carrying white flowers and very good yellow fruit.

This erect, flirting with fastigiate, species comes via a collection by Canadian plantsman and author/auteur, Grahame Ware, from the turgid waters of the Minyong Glacier at 13000' on Kawagarbo Mountain, in the Meili Snow Mountains of Yunnan, as part of a Kunming Botanic garden expedition. Small leaves and white flowers followed by reddish fruit on a narrow and distinctively upright shrub to 7'+ so far.

A deciduous shrubby Cotoneaster collected in Asia by Arlen Hill who owns one of our favorite nurseries, Keeping It Green. This was a scrambler on a rocky cliff but will be a small shrub in the garden. Such a varied genus from groundcover to small trees with the shared attributes of pollinator-irresistible white flowers and red fruit for fall and early winter interest. Someday in our dotage when discretionary time is abundant and we tire of whittling to fill the hours, we will fire up Flora of China online and puzzle through the key to a proper identity for this species.

Our collection from Asia of this low growing - prostrate actually - creeping Cotoneaster. It is one we admired as it crept over a rock face along the trail and we kept going, not intending to collect seed. Looking back, we saw our friend and great plantsman Peter Cox collecting seed so we scampered back to do the same. Found in the range of C. dammeri but there are 111 species in China alone. White flowers, red fruit and evergreen.