Agarita Notes

 Agarita (Berbis trifoliolata) (2020)

Exposure:  Sun or part-sun
Seasonal Interest:  yellow spring flowers,  red berries
Size:  2- 6ft x 6ft
Evergreen
Hardy to 15 degrees

Agarita is a rounded shrub with beautiful gray-green, holly-like foliage and clusters of fragrant yellow flowers from February through April. With its armor of spiny evergreen leaves, this plant provides a perfect shelter for small wildlife (birds, rodents, rattlesnakes) as larger animals tend not to browse the foliage.  

Flowers
"The bright yellow, saffron-scented flowers are especially attractive to bees.  The early blooming period of the plant (as early as January or February) provides copious amounts of pollen and nectar for the bees at a time where there is precious little to be had.  Agarita is preceded only be mistletoe in the annual blooming cycle of bee plants in Texas. Its flowers are also unusual in having stamens with touch-sensitive bases, which, when triggered, strike the nectar-seeking bee on the head, covering it in pollen.  The fresh flowers of all Texas species Berberis are also entirely edible"  Remarkable Plants of Texas, pg 109

Fruit
The fruit that follows is a bright red berry that is a magnet for birds and small mammals and which makes a delicious jelly. "There is evidence going back to 7000BCD (Baker Cave, ValVerde County) that early Americas ate the berries.  Ripening in May and June, the berries are one of the earlies fruits of the season, but even when ripe, they are highly acidic... The Apache are known to have made a type of jelly from the fruit as well. The roasted seeds have been used as a substitute for coffee.

The best way to collect the fruit is to place a sheet or upturned umbrella around the base and to whack the bush with a stick or broom.

Take a knife to the bark of any stem, and you will find a surprisingly bright yellow flesh beneath.  The yellow coloring, present in both the stems and roots, was prized by the native American and early settlers as a source for a yellow and tan-orange dye. "Berlandier, one of the earlies trained botanists to collect in Texas, noted in 1828 that the pounded rooms were use to make a yellow dye."  Current day craftsmen use the yellow wood in carvings and for beads.  A 1977 article in Texas Parks and Wildlife gave instructions for dyeing Easter eggs with an extract of this plant

Medicinal Uses
The roots contain antimicrobial alkaloid named berberine.  It has been used as a dressing for impetigo, a skin infection, and ringworm. A decoction of the roots was also used in frontier times for toothache.  berberine, which can be derived from many species in this genu, has a weak physiological effect but in sufficient quantities it can cause fatal poisoning.

Origin of Name
Agarito, Spanish for "Little Sour," name for it highly acidic fruit. Berberis is the latinized form of berberys, an Arabic name of the fruit.  Some workers place the species in the genus Mahonia, named in honor of Bernard M'Mahon (1775-1816) a prominent American horticulturist.  Trifoliolata refers to the compound of leaves of three leaflets

Personal History
I have wanted an agarita for awhile.  They are all over our backyard, but digging them up has always been very difficult. In April 2019, I managed to dig one up and keep it alive for a few months, but the heat of summer killed it. So in 2020, I dug one up in February.  It made it through the summer, and seems to be thriving, so I will now count it among my 'permanent' plants.