Bittersweet

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Bittersweet bud

Bittersweet

Bittersweet staminate flowers

bittersweet fruit

Bittersweet fruit

Bittersweet bud

Bittersweet staminate flowers

Bittersweet

Bittersweet immature fruit

Bittersweet staminate inflorescence

Bittersweet fruit

Bittersweet leaf

Bittersweet flowers

Morphology

Trunk

Stems clambering or climbing; bark light gray, smooth or exfoliating in thin flakes or sheets; wood white, soft.

Twigs

Brown to grayish brown, flexible, glabrous; leaf scars half-round; buds reddish brown, ovoid, apex obtuse, scales glabrous.

Leaves

Deciduous, alternate, simple; petiole .4 to 1.2 inch; blade elliptic to ovate-oblong, 1.2 to 4.8 inches long, .6 to 2.8 inches wide, base tapered, margins minutely toothed, apex acuminate, surfaces abaxially light green, glabrous, adaxially green, glabrous.

Flowers

Terminal on new growth, panicles, 6-40-flowered; peduncles .8 to 2.8 inches, glabrous; pedicels .08 to .16 inch, glabrous, jointed. Flowers unisexual and bisexual, radially symmetric; sepals 5, distinct, ovate, .04 to .08 inch; petals 5, distinct, white to greenish white, triangular to ovate, .12 to .16 inch; disk 5-lobed; bisexual: stamens 5, to .7 inch, arising from ends of lobes; pistil 1; style 1; stigma 3-lobed; staminate: stamens 5; pistillode present; pistillate: staminodes 5; pistil 1; style 1; stigma 3-lobed.

Fruit

August to October; capsules, globose, 3-valved, .3 to .5 inch diameter, smooth to wrinkled, valves orange; seeds reddish brown to brown, ovoid, ca. .24 inch, ridged adaxially; aril red, completely surrounding seed.

Ecology

Habitat

Woods, thickets, fencerows, roadsides, rocky hillsides, stream banks, bases of bluffs, margins of upland prairie; rocky soils.

Distribution

Principally in east 4/5 of Kansas

Practical Information

Toxicity

The fruit can cause mild digestive disturbance but are eaten by birds. The leaves are toxic to horses.

Uses

Native Americans cooked the inner bark as an emergency food source in the winter, chewed the roots for coughs, took an infusion of bark to settle the stomach, and steeped the roots and applied the liquid on sores and the teeth and gums of teething infants. The Lakota rubbed chewed roots on the body, believing it would make them resistant to wounds. Birds nest in the twisting vines.

Additional Notes