Leycesteria formosa, the pheasant berry, is a deciduous shrub in the family Caprifoliaceae, native to the Himalayas and southwestern China. It is considered a noxious invasive species in Australia, New Zealand, the neighbouring islands of Micronesia, and some other places. In the Himalayas, the shrub is frequently used in the traditional medicine of the various countries and peoples encompassed within the region.
Names The genus name Leycesteria was coined by Nathaniel Wallich (one time director of Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta) in honour of his friend William Leycester, Chief justice and noted amateur horticulturist, in Bengal in about 1820; while the Latin specific name formosa (feminine form of formosus) signifies 'beautiful' or 'handsome' (literally: 'shapely') – in reference to the curious, pendent inflorescences with their richly wine-coloured bracts. There is a popular misconception, however, that the specific name derives from the place name 'Formosa', which is an abbreviation of the original Portuguese name for the island of Taiwan: Ilha Formosa "beautiful island". Portuguese is a romance language (i.e. derived from Latin) and the adjective formosa has passed into it unchanged in spelling and meaning from the original Latin. Leycesteria formosa is so named in recognition of its beauty, not in acknowledgment of an origin on the island now known as Taiwan. The Latin specific names of certain plants, given to indicate that they were native to Taiwan at a time when it was known as Formosa take such forms as formosae, formosana and formosensis, not the Latin adjective/Portuguese adjective-used-as-a-proper-noun formosa. Other common names include Himalayan honeysuckle, pheasant-eye, Elisha's tears, flowering nutmeg, spiderwort, Cape fuchsia, whistle stick, Himalaya nutmeg, granny's curls,partridge berry, chocolate berry, shrimp plant/flower and treacle tree/berry It is also recorded as Symphoricarpos rivularis Suksdorf. Contrary to the impression given by the respective common names, the plant is completely unrelated either to the nutmeg tree or to the fuchsia. Further contrary to the name "Cape fuchsia", it is not native to South Africa – the name being especially inappropriate, given that the family Caprifoliaceae as a whole is absent from Sub-Saharan Africa.
Wallich was Danish by birth and perhaps could hardly be expected to forsee that within fifty years or so the name of the worthy Justice [Leycester(ia)] would be corrupted into 'Elisha's tears' – which yet seems strangely to suit the plant, with its pendent white flowers and its persistent bracts which darken to a sombre blood red as the season advances.Garden Shrubs and their HistoriesAlice M. Coats It is apparent from the above that the common name Elisha's tears falls into the same category (of jocular corruptions of the scientific names of plants into common names more congenial to rural British taste) as Aunt Eliza (for Antholyza) and Sally-my-handsome for Mesembryanthemum. It is also testament to a greater familiarity with the names of biblical figures – such as the Old Testament prophets – on the part of Britons of the nineteenth century, when compared to their counterparts in the twenty-first.
Affiliation within Caprifoliaceae The results of the genetic testing undertaken by Zhang et al. have revealed that Leycesteria is most closely related to the genera Triosteum (common name – "horse gentians"; Chinese: 莛子藨属; tíng zi biāo shǔ) and Heptacodium (Chinese common name: 七子花; qī zi huā; lit. "seven son flower"). Of these, only Triosteum has fruits that are berries, the fruits of Heptacodium being dry capsules. These three genera belong to the subfamily Caprifolioideae of the honeysuckle family Caprifoliaceae, the other two genera in the subfamily being Lonicera, the (true) honeysuckles and Symphoricarpos, the snowberries.
Description It is found to be a hardy evergreen, requiring a considerable degree of moisture, and a situation slightly sheltered and shaded, though the colour of its bracts would be most probably be heightened by exposure to solar light. Propagation is effected by cuttings or layers.Joseph PaxtonPaxton's Magazine of Botany Volume VI (1839) A deciduous, sometimes evergreen, half-woody, shrub-like plant (intermediate between a shrub and a herbaceous perennial) with young stems that are soft, hollow and upright in various shades of green, salmon pink, maroon and purple, 1–3 m (3 ft 3 in – 9 ft 10 in) in height, which may only last for 2–5 years before collapsing and being replaced by new stems from the roots. Mature specimens, however, may have short, truly woody trunks clothed in rough, grey bark at the base. The leaves are opposite, dark green and usually cordate 6–18 cm (2.4–7.1 in) long and 4–9 cm (1.6–3.5 in) broad, with an entire, wavy or even deeply lobed margin and often an extended drip tip (commonly an adaptation to a wet climate). The flowers (bee-pollinated) are produced on 5–10 cm (2.0–3.9 in) long pendulous racemes; each flower is small, white, pale pink or rarely deep purplish pink, subtended by a purplish-pink bract, terminating – like the leaves – in a drip tip. The fruit is a berry, hard and deep pink when unripe, and fragile, soft (easily burst) and a deep purple-brown when ripe and measuring 1 cm in diameter. The berries are eaten avidly by birds, which disperse the seeds in their droppings. The berries are unpleasantly bitter when unripe, but, once soft and deep purple-brown in colour, are edible and sweet, having a mild flavour reminiscent of toffee or caramel. Being a recent introduction to Europe, the plant lacks any traditional uses there.
Distribution L. formosa includes within its wide range of distribution the areas of all the other known species of the genus. From the North-West Frontier Province and the Punjab it ranges the whole length of the Himalaya eastwards to south-eastern Yunnan, where it was collected by Henry near Mengtze, and north-eastwards to Szechuan and eastern Tibet, where Rehder's var. stenosepala appears to replace very largely the typical form. A Revision of the Genus Leycesteria — H.K. Airy-Shaw
The species is native to Pakistan, India, Nepal, East and West Himalaya, Southwestern China (Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou), Tibet and Myanmar.
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