Cranberry Cotoneaster Cotoneaster apiculatus
Cranberry Cotoneaster is an introduced perennial shrub, found in the lower 48 states. It grows to 5 ft and blooms Apr in full sun – part shade, with red fruit.
More about this plant
Cotoneaster apiculatus, the cranberry cotoneaster, is a species of flowering plant in the family Rosaceae. It is native to central China, and it has been introduced to various locales in Europe and the United States. A rabbit-tolerant shrub reaching 3 ft (1 m) tall but spreading to 6 ft (2 m), and hardy in USDA zones 4 through 7, it is recommended for covering large areas. It is good on streambanks and slopes where erosion control is desired, as its branches will grow roots where they touch soil. Wikipedia →
Growing & care
USDA PLANTS · TRY- Sun
- Full sun – part shade
- Soil & moisture
- Medium moisture
- Soil pH
- 5–7.5
- Fertility need
- Medium
- Adapts to
- Medium (loam)
- Hardiness
- USDA zone 4+
- Height
- 5 ft
- Mature width
- ~ 4 ft wide DERIVED derived estimate — open-grown crown allometry (height × growth-form ratio); not a measurement
- Spacing
- 6–8 ft apart from USDA planting density
- Spread
- Moderate
- Growth rate
- Rapid
- Growth form
- Multiple stems
- Lifespan
- Perennial · moderate
- Foliage
- Deciduous broadleaf · medium texture
- Active growth
- Spring & summer
- Fruit
- Red persists into winter
- Flower colour
- Pink AI AI image-analysis of community-science photos (~87% expert agreement) — not a botanical record
- Propagate by
- Seed, Cuttings, Bare root, Container
- Seed starting
- Needs cold stratification a cold-moist spell before it germinates
- Seeds ripen
- Summer – Autumn seed-collection / harvest window
- In the trade
- Routinely available
- Deer browsing
- Low often deer-resistant
- Resprouts if cut
- Yes regrows after top-kill
Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.
Wildlife & pollinators
How pollinator value is scored →❧ Caterpillar hosts ~3 caterpillar species
Cotoneaster supports ~3 caterpillar species.
Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus for introduced plants — native genera typically support far more.
Recorded feeding on Cotoneaster in North America, including:
✦ Bees 42 bee visitors
42 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Cranberry Cotoneaster — the 12 most-recorded:
Related plants
More Cotoneaster →
How we know this (3) Methods & honest limits
A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.
For woody plants that have a height but no measured crown, we estimate width = height × a crown-to-height ratio fit for that plant’s form (conifers narrower than broadleaf trees, shrubs widest), calibrated on our measured open-grown crowns and capped at the largest one ever measured. A measured crown always wins; herbaceous plants get nothing (no anchor).
Honest limits: A coarse class-median estimate for garden-scale spacing, not a measurement; woody single/multi-stem forms only.
McKenzie et al. assigned each species a flower colour with a GPT-4V vision model over iNaturalist photos. We use the confident tier plus a separately-labelled lower-confidence top-up (mostly inconspicuous green/brown flowers), and render it as a small tint — never as an asserted fact, and kept out of the written synopsis.
Honest limits: AI image inference (~87% expert agreement on the confident tier); a decorative, confidence-tiered indicator, not a measured trait.
Sources for this entry (31) Open & cited
Cite this page Open data, please attribute
PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
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