Marlberry
Ardisia escallonioides
Marlberry is a tall, columnar shrub found in Central and South Florida in inland forests and maritime hammocks up to North Florida. Marlberry can take full sun or deep shade, moist soil or dry and short term flooding. It is tolerant of salt air, yet not salt water flooding.
Use Marlberry as a privacy screen or as a tall, free standing specimen. The flowers smell sweet and fruity, yet are not overpowering. Suckers will come up from the roots and fill in a hedge. The pea sized black berries are produced in the spring and several other times of the year. They are edible and you may like the sweet astringent taste but don’t chew the seed.
This is a high quality shrub that can be pruned back once a year to keep it less than six feet tall or left to grow naturally up to 16 feet. When planted where it can sucker freely, you will end up with a mass of plants often stretching twelve feet in a long band. This gives the very natural look of a thicket. Catbirds love the berries, several may be found in the area of a fruiting marlberry.
I have found this plant growing wild along our coast from the Keys to Vero Beach, sometimes in full sun. It is said to occur up to Flagler County along the East Coast. I have also found it in Orchard View Park in Delray Beach and along the Port Mayaca Trail, which is very shady, on the eastern side of Lake Okeechobee. Some sources say that the plant is poisonous, but this is not true, although please don’t eat it.
This is one of my favorite shrubs and can be used almost anywhere due to its tolerance of dry, occasionally wet, rich or poor soil and shady or sunny areas. As part of a mixed hedge I plant several together and give them room to sucker and fill empty spaces between themselves and other plants.
Use with Wild Coffee, Myrsine, Firebush, Myrtle of the River, Indigo Berry, Florida Boxwood, Small’s Viburnum, Crabwood, Bitterbush, Jamaica Caper, Simpson, Spanish, White, Red and Redberry Stoppers. These are all upright shrubs that mix well. Marlberry is a great understory plant for Live Oak, Gumbo Limbo, Mastic, Red Maple, Hackberry, Florida Elm and many other tall trees.