Dwarf, hard-wooded trees that flower and fruit when quite small; the best of the berried plants with handsome glossy foliage, and densely covered with bright red berries.

Ardisia Japonica has white berries but is little grown, being neither very handsome nor showy.

Ardisia Crenulata in White Pot Cover.

A. crenulata is the best known and most useful. They can be propagated by cuttings of the half-ripened wood in April and May, but are more easily raised from seed. Sow the seed as soon as ripe in a temperature of 60 degrees. Be careful in transplanting into pots not to let the plants wilt from drought or sun. Grow them on in a light house and shift as they require it. The following spring they can be given their flowering, or rather fruiting, pot, plunged on a light bench in the greenhouse. If sown in March or April they will flower the following spring, and will bear their first crop of berries for the coming winter. The berries hang on frequently a whole year and two crops of berries on the same plant are frequently seen. When over two feet in height they become bare and unsightly. A night temperature of 50 degrees in winter is about right. Brown scale is their greatest enemy and to keep those down a sponging of soap and nicotine must be used.