Fern Like Plant With Red Berries
In the summer it produces small white blossoms followed by bright red berries.
Fern like plant with red berries. Cut each berry open with a sharp knife and remove the small black seeds. Much like ferns it is used as an ornamental indoors and outdoors and the fountain like growth form is reminiscent of a fern. The flowers and berries do not appear every year and the berries can be toxic if eaten. In garden beds they spread vigorously by their fleshy roots as well as when birds eating the berries deposit seeds.
It has a tall fluffy frond like appearance. Harvest the foxtail fern berries when they turn from green to a glossy red. The inch long needle like leaves are actually short modified branchlets called cladodes which appear along the thin stems so abundantly that the whole plant becomes a showy mound of bright green. It is not a true fern but has fern like foliage and a dense growth habit growing two to three feet tall and three to four feet wide.
Hardy in usda zones 9 through 11 flowering is followed by the production of small red berries with each containing one or two black seeds. Close examination reveals that unlike a true fern this plant produces inconspicuous white flowers that later transform into red berries.