Strawberry Tree: Arbutus unedo


Arbutus unedo: Native to the Mediterranean region, western Europe, Ireland and France and commonly known as the Irish Strawberry Tree this is one of my favorites. A picturesque evergreen small tree or shrub in the Ericaceae family with serrated dark glossy leaves and fruit that looks like frosted glass christmas ornaments. The showy white flowers in fall and winter give way to yellow and red fruit .5-1 inch in the spring and summer. The fruit is edible and loved by birds and also used for making jams and liqueurs. A beautiful tree that can be included in an edible landscaping design giving it added value.

I photographed this Strawberry Tree at the Meditation Gardens at Swami’s in Encinitas, CA. The bark of the tree has a shredded flaking appearance with a trunk that twists and bends with its growth habit. The warm multi-colors of browns and reds in the trunk will melt your heart.

Height: Average maturity 8-18 feet

Spread: Equal to height.

Drought Tolerant: Moderate

Sun: Full sun or partial shade. Can be potted and used as a patio tree.

* For the smaller trees try ‘Oktoberfest’ or ‘Compacta‘ (link) Arbutus unedo trees.

Soil: Well drained clay, acidic, loam, sand or alkaline soil.

Mature Strawberry Tree grown in full sun.

Beautiful Twisted Tree Trunk of the Strawberry Tree

Edible Fruit of the Arbutus unedo tree

Multi-colored fruit of Arbutus unedo

Thank you for visiting my garden blog today! http://www.nadiaknows.com

♥ sharing garden inspirations ♥

About these ads

3 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. Lynn
    Jul 12, 2010 @ 17:12:04

    Beautiful, unusual tree, Nadia. We have a native with similar fruit called ‘Hearts-a-busting’, Euonymous americana. Love the gnarly bark.

    Reply

  2. nadia
    Jul 12, 2010 @ 17:57:25

    I just looked up the americana on google images… nice!

    Reply

  3. Trackback: Water Trees and Shrubs « Gardora.net

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 139 other followers

%d bloggers like this: