Winterberry is native to eastern North America from Newfoundland west to Minnesota and south to Alabama.
Winterberry is an erect moderate sized shrub, growing to heights of 5 to 15 feet tall. The smooth bark of winterberry is gray to blackish, with knobby lenticels. The dense branches of this shrub grow in a zigzag pattern with an upright spreading crown. The twigs are slender, with gray to gray-brown color and small buds.
Winterberries are dioecious, meaning that it has separate male and female plants. Only fertilized flowers on the female plants produce the attractive red berries (actually drupes, 6–8 mm in size). The plant blooms in early June. The flowers are small, 5 mm diameter, with 5-8 cream white petals and are not especially showy. Winterberry is found in bogs and boggy woodlands and wetlands along with cinnamon fern spinulose woodfern, Canada mayflower, steeple bush, meadow sweet and red maple.
Although this shrub species is a good provider of wildlife food, its fruits are poisonous to humans.
Ilex
verticillata, the winterberry
