How to Grow and Care for Mitchella

The partridge berry is a low-growing ground cover that thrives in shady, moist locations. It develops pretty, trumpet-shaped white flowers in the spring, followed by a scarlet red berry. The flowers grow in pairs and both flowers must be fertilized to produce a berry. It is said that the berries are edible, but tasteless and seedy.

The stems are round in cross section hairless 10 to 40 cm long but they crawl or sag completely and rarely extend upward off the surface. The roots come out from the nodes of the stem. The leaves are opposite and have very small stipules. The leaves are oval 8 to 15 mm long and 4 to 12 mm wide and the petiole 2 to 5 mm long. The leaf blades are dark green shiny thick and hairless oval short and sharp at the tip and rounded at the base. Also the edges are slightly wavy. The flowering period is in summer with a flower stem about 5 mm long at the tip of the branch and a flower attached to the tip. There are always two flowers and the ovary at the base of each flower is united with each other. The corolla is white and funnel-shaped is 1 cm long has four cleaved tips and the cleft is wide open and 8 mm in diameter. There are hairs inside the split. There are four stamens which come out from the inside of the corolla and peek at the open part of the anther. The fruits are round turn red when ripe and are 8 mm in diameter.