General Culture:
Best grown in moist, loamy, well-drained soils in full sun to part shade. Good drainage is essential. A tough and adaptable plant that can withstand considerable drought once established. Use two container-grown plants per square yard for mass plantings.
Noteworthy Characteristics:
Rockspray cotoneaster is a coarse, prostrate, slow-growing, horizontally-spreading, deciduous shrub, which typically matures to 12-18” tall and spreads to 5-8’ wide with tiers of flattened, horizontal branches arranged in a fishbone pattern. It features five-petaled, small pink flowers in early summer, bright scarlet berries in late summer to fall and tiny, rounded, lustrous, dark green leaves (to 3/8” long) that turn reddish-purple in fall.
Problems:
No serious insect or disease problems. Susceptible to fireblight, leaf spot and canker. Dense foliage can present maintenance problems because of the difficulty of cleaning dead leaves and trash from the interior of a planting.
Uses:
Rockspray cotoneaster is a valuable landscape plant which offers good foliage, flowers and fruit, and provides shelter for small birds. Mass as a woody ground cover for sunny areas in the landscape including banks or slopes where it can also provide good erosion control. Sprawl over rocks in rock gardens or along stone walls. Can be espaliered.
© Missouri Botanical
Garden, 2001-2010
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