Callicarpa bodinieri var giraldii 'Profusion'

Callicarpa bodinieri H. Lev. var giraldii Lamiaceae Beautyberry. The genus name bodinieri commemorates Emile Marie Bodinier (1842-1901) French missionary with Missions Etrangeres, and plant collector in China. He sent 930 herbarium specimens from the Peking region, via Pere David, to the Paris museum in 1890, and 1500 from Hong Kong in 1892 before going to Guizhou. The varietal name giraldii is not recognised by the International Plant Names Index, but used in horticulture. It commemorates Giuseppe Giraldi (1848-1901) an Italian missionary in China who collected plants in Shaanxi province 1890-1895 for the University of Florence (Bretschneider, 1898), . The cultivar 'Profusion' has an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. Medium-size deciduous shrub. Distribution: China. Described in 1911. The berries are bitter to taste, so probably poisonous, despite guesses to the contrary. The North American Callicarpa americana was used b y the Alabama people in a sweat bath for malaria and rheumatism' . The Choctaw drank a decoction of the roots for dysentery, colic and dizziness the Koasati used it for stomach ache and the Seminole for 'snake sickness', itchy skin and urinary retention (Moerman, 1998). No documentation found for C. bodinieri being used in Chinese medicine. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.