Ask John Negus John has been answering reader queries for 50 years
Can you please identify my pretty shrub?
Q What is this plant, please? It is very attractive.
Anthony Smiles, via email
A The plant you have asked us to identify is called pheasant berry. The Latin name is Leycesteria formosa.
Technically it is regarded as a shrub, but the stems are hollow and remain green throughout the year, only going noticeably woody in their second year. It reaches a height of about 6ft (1.8m).
It is a very attractive plant with long, slightly arching stems bearing dense panicles of flowers that consist of dramatic claret-red bracts enclosing white blooms.
These appear during July and August. The bracts are retained and the flowers are followed in October by reddish-purple berries (much loved by pheasants, hence the common name).
Leycesteria can grow quite happily in most ordinary, well-drained garden soil. They flower best in full sun, but tolerate partial shade.
The hollow stems can be damaged by a hard winter, but new shoots should appear from the base in spring.
Flowers are produced at the top of each year’s stems, so you can cut the plant hard back in late winter. However, you get a longer flowering season by only cutting a third to a half of the stems.
The remaining stems should be trimmed to remove any old flowers, and these will flower again in early summer, new stems produced from low down in the plant flowering in later summer.
