Ruscus

Evergreen subshrubs, from the Mediterranean, with small flowers, typically on different plants (dioecious), followed by red berries on female or hemaphrodite plants. Interestingly the true leaves are tiny and the apparent leaves are strictly speaking cladodes, which are stems taking on the form and function of a leaf. Curiously the flowers sit in the middle of these cladodes.

With flowers that would appear to have some adaptations to insect-pollination and berries to bird-dispersal, it is perhaps surprising that Ruscus species seem to be devoid of insect pollinators and bird dispersal agents; it is suggested that given the genus evolved tens of millions of years ago in a very different climate and geographic location, it may have lost its original pollinators and distributors into the mists of time. So the main thing one can say about its present-day wildlife value is that its clumped growth and, in some species, sharply spine-tipped shoots, provide refuge for many invertebrates, including beneficial natural predators.

 
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