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It is not easy being an evergreen groundcover in southern Indiana. Reliable snow cover during winter months to protect foliage seldom exists. I live and garden in Zone 6, but Zone 5 weather is certainly no stranger to our gardens. The soil freezes solid and winter winds whistle through sucking moisture from foliage leaving brown blotches in its wake. Shortly after freezing, the soil then thaws, only to freeze once more in continuous cycles, heaving all but the best established and tenacious of root systems. Our native woodland wonder, Mitchella repens, always comes through unscathed remaining a deep, lustrous, spring-green.

The sheer number of common names for this member of the Madder family attests to the popularity of the partridgeberry. Deerberry and partridgeberry say something of its popularity with local wildlife as a food source. Checkerberry refers to the bright red berries over the green foliage. Twinflower aptly describes the flowering habit. In all, I am aware of over thirty common names for this widely distributed and well-loved creeper.

Mitchella repens

Mitchella repens can usually be found forming small carpets on embankments and hummocks in the wood. Preferred locations, such as raised areas, the base of mature trees, would be to keep accumulating leaf litter from smothering the tiny foliage. Soil is usually acidic. Personally, I am not completely convinced of their need for acidic soil. Mitchella repens grows with good vigor in nursery pots that have a neutral medium. I have plants growing in three widely disbursed gardens, under varied conditions and it thrives in all three locations. One site is in among limestone rocks.

Without a doubt, partridgeberry is among our most interesting of native woodland plants. Mitchella repens is a diminutive ground-hugging vine that forms a dense evergreen mat produced by rooting stems. Each tiny leaf is opposite along the stem, rounded-ovate in outline. Individual leaves are from one third to two-thirds inch (6 to 18mm) in length. Color is a deep, rich, spring-green with white along the midrib and veins.

Partridgeberry flowers June through July with one-half inch long, white flaring trumpets that are fuzzy inside and fragrant. The flowers are scattered along individual stems always in pairs, joined at the base like Siamese twins where a single ovary is shared. Thus, it takes two flowers to produce a single berry.

Each bright red berry will have two small `eyes' or `bumps' from where the corollas were joined. The bright red of the berries against the spring green of the foliage is quite showy. This is especially true when berries last over into the next flowering season. There will then be white twin blooms accompanied by red berries against the green mat.

Partridgeberry is easily propagated. Snip a short section of stem that has a hair-like root or two and pot up in a moist medium. Two or three pieces to a four-inch pot quickly forms a nice beginning for the garden.

In my garden partridgeberry flows between, creeps over, limestone rocks where they assist in showing each other off to best advantage. In early spring several species of Troutlilies (Erythronium) push through the green mat to display mottled foliage and bloom. A bit later jack in the pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) makes an appearance to form its own red berries, extending the colorful display.