Bring the riches of nature into your home with Skimmia.
Flower buds
When other plants are dormant in winter, Skimmia leaps out with striking flower buds. The colour varies from light green to warm dark red. If the branches aren’t pruned the flower buds open in spring. The flowers spread a pleasant perfume. The female cultivars also develop berries (if a male cultivar is in the surrounding area), but there are also dual gender Skimmia’s, which always produce berries.
For the goats
Skimmia belongs to the Rue family (Rutaceae), which the lemon and orange also belong to. That explains the citrus smell which comes out if you squeeze a Skimmia leaf. Skimmia grows in the wild in deciduous forests in Asia. The story goes that Carl Peter Thunberg, a student of Linnaeus, was staying on a Japanese island and needed green feed for his goats. His servants brought him a range of wild plants, one of which they called the Miyama shikimi. Thunberg wrote about this plant and translated it into Skimmia.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: PurESeasonalFlowers