Posted by
ILPARW (southeast Pennsylvania - Zone 6b) on Aug 3, 2018 2:55 PM concerning plant:
There is some confusion here. The real Peking Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster acutifolius) from Mongolia and northern China has duller foliage with more hair on the leaves and flowers. This shrub sold by many Midwestern nurseries is technically the Hedge Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster lucidus) that has the shiny, less hairy leaves and flowers, from western China. Otherwise, what's the difference?, hardly anything. I don't know of any conventional nurseries in the Chicago, IL region selling what is called Hedge Cotoneaster. They sell the "Peking Cotoneaster" that is really C. lucidus, or better yet should be Cotoneaster acutifolius lucidus. There is also another extremely similar species of Cotoneaster foveolatus, the Glossy Cotoneaster, from central China, that has larger, more pointed leaves to 3.5 inches long, and I have only seen this shrub one time as several plants at the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2018. They should all be slightly different varieties of the same species. Anyway, the Peking Cotoneaster is a good quality, handsome large shrub that makes a good informal screen or is easily sheared to become a hedge, high or low. It bears nice, small, white flower clusters in May that are pollinated by bees. The small black berries are dry and don't taste good, and few are borne on shrubs in the US. I don't know if the birds eat them, and I don't want these to escape cultivation, though I don't know of this shrub ever doing that. The berries probably are not fertile. The autumn colour is always good of mostly orange with spots of yellow, red, and purple. Peking Cotoneaster is used a lot in the northern Plains and I've only seen it used in USDA Zones 4 & 5 even though it can grow farther south. Back in the 1970's I once had to prune back the three shrubs in my parent's backyard about one and a half feet below the invading infection of Fire Blight Disease that was moving downward, causing blackened stems and leaves and "shepherd's crook" formations of upper stems to save the life of the shrubs, and it worked.
