Strawberry Tree

Strawberry tree is the Mediterranean evergreen that does something almost nothing else in the region does: it flowers and fruits simultaneously, in October through December, when the rest of the garden has shut down. The flowers are small, urn-shaped, white to pinkish, hanging in clusters, nearly identical to its Pacific Northwest relative, Pacific madrone. The fruit is a round, rough-surfaced red berry about an inch across that takes a full year to ripen, so you get last year's ripe fruit hanging alongside this year's fresh flowers on the same branch. The tree grows eight to twelve feet tall with a rounded form and attractive reddish bark, staying evergreen through our winters.

Strawberry tree handles Western Washington well enough to be considered an underused ornamental. It takes full sun, tolerates a range of soils from limestone to clay, and once established handles our dry summers with minimal supplemental water. The fruit is edible but bland, mealy texture, faintly sweet, and better left for the birds. The catch is the susceptibility profile: twenty-seven documented diseases and twenty-nine pests make this one of the most heavily surveilled species in the knowledge base. In practice, most of those are episodic or regionally uncommon, and an established tree in a well-drained site does not show serious problems in most years. But if you are in a wet, poorly drained spot, root rot and anthracnose will find it. Site it right, full sun, decent drainage, some protection from the coldest wind, and you get a year-round performer that most of your neighbors have never seen.