This Just In! Beautyberry Repels Mosquitoes!

Everyone who visits my yard eventually hears me extol the virtues of that lovely native shrub known as American Beautyberry.  I love it so much I have used it for years as my profile picture on this blog.

The little shrub I picked up from Sam Jones' Atlantic Star Nursery table at the National Arboretum's Lahr Symposium plant sale years ago has thrived and continues to delight  me with its strange fall color and resilience to all kinds of wacky weather fluctuations.  This is a hearty-but-pretty garden resident that has rewarded us with a fantastic view of purple berries each November with great reliability.  What's odd is that almost no one plants it.

In fact, I would rate it as one of the most under-used and under-appreciated native shrubs in the Mid-Atlantic; despite being a shrub that needs no care in order to produce a fantastic crop of berries that many of our local birds hungrily enjoy eating almost no commercial large-scale nursery carries it and almost no one has heard of it.  Instead, everyone talks about the supposed superiority of the Japanese Beautyberry, an opinion that I do not share.  I think the Japanese version looks like an overdressed party goer -- gaudy and a bit too fussy and not complementary to the color of our native trees in fall.

That may all change now that the USDA has realized that this amazing native plant can help repel mosquitoes almost as well as DEET.  It seems that just crushing the leaves of this shrub and rubbing them on your skin does the trick.  Backwoodsmen throughout American seem to have known this for a very long time.

So as a gardener in an area overcome by mosquitoes, I say, move over, Japanese Beautyberry.  The underdog is about to take over.

(I have to give credit to my blogging pal Betsy Franz for publicizing this research on her VERY cool blog, Metro DC Lawn and Garden.  Betsy is always unearthing the most wonderful garden tidbits... pun very much intended.  And her friendly, breezy style makes getting daily updates on the environment a real  treat.  See for yourself, subscribe to her blog and you will be dazzled.)

Meanwhile, I'm headed out to take a look at those little sprouts I noticed around my garden hose when we got back from vacation.  They looked an awful lot like baby beautyberries.  If so I think I may have some presents for my mosquito plagued gardening friends!