Photo: User:MPF, CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Japanese Barberry

Berberis thunbergii

Also known as Thunberg's Barberry, Red Barberry

At a glance

Family

Berberidaceae (barberry family)

Type

Deciduous, thorny woody shrub

Parts used

Bark and root bark (chemically active, but not part of established modern herbal practice for this species)

Size

3 to 6 feet tall and wide, though many garden cultivars stay under 2 feet

Bloom

Small clusters of pale yellow flowers in mid-spring, followed by bright coral-red berries that hang on well into winter

Habitat

Native to Japan; long planted as an ornamental hedge across North America, where it has since escaped gardens and naturalized aggressively in woodlands, field edges, and roadsides

Acquisition

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Key benefits

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Dense thorny hedging shrub

Brilliant scarlet fall foliage

Deer tend to avoid it

Berries linger for winter birds

Traditional uses

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Japanese barberry was carried out of Japan in the 1870s as a tidy, thorny substitute for its European cousin, common barberry, after farmers began pulling that plant out for harboring wheat rust. It was never really a folk medicine plant in its own right, its fame was always in the hedgerow, prized for its fiery autumn color and its knack for turning back deer and trespassers alike. That said, it belongs to the same berberine-rich genus as barberries that herbalists have leaned on for centuries, so its chemistry is often mentioned in the same breath as its more medicinally storied relatives, even though this particular species was not traditionally gathered for the home apothecary. Today it is better known to land managers as an aggressive invader than to herbalists as a remedy.

How to grow & use it

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Pairs well with

✦Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium)
✦Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis)
✦Barberry (Berberis vulgaris)

Substitutes

✦Common barberry (Berberis vulgaris), the traditionally documented medicinal relative
✦Oregon grape root (Mahonia aquifolium)

Choose it when

“For a hedge that blazes scarlet every autumn and turns away every trespasser, this is the shrub, just plant it thoughtfully, since it rarely stays where it is put.”

Did you know?

Ecologists have found that thickets of Japanese barberry hold more humidity at ground level than the surrounding woods, and that damp microclimate turns out to be ideal for blacklegged ticks, so dense stands of this pretty shrub have been linked to higher local rates of Lyme disease.

Safety

Japanese barberry isn't used medicinally, and its thorny stems call for gloves when handling. It's classified as an invasive species across much of the eastern and midwestern US, and many states restrict planting or selling it.