Bunchberry (Cornus unalaschkensis)

Plant: Bunchberry (Cornus unalaschkensis).

Why it's choice: Bunchberry, the ground-cover member of the dogwood family, is one of the most attractive and useful native plants for the garden. Whether in flower, fruit or simply in its leafy-green stage, bunchberry is a nice addition to the shady, woodland garden.

What it can do in the garden: A moist, shady woodland garden would not be complete without the addition of a few patches of bunchberry. Tuck them in under trees and the shade-loving rhododendrons and azaleas.

Combine them with ferns, foamflower (Tiarella) and trillium for an enchanting display in spring. Bunchberry blooms in mid- to late spring, its clusters of small flowers surrounded by four white bracts, very typical of the rest of the dogwood family. The flowers are followed in late summer and fall by bunches of bright red berrylike fruits, attractive to many bird species, and edible for humans, too.

Where to see it: Our native bunchberry grows along the West Coast from Southeast Alaska to Northern California. It can be found in forests from sea level up to sub-alpine elevations, often growing on or near old logs and tree stumps.

The facts: Bunchberry is truly a denizen of the moist shaded forests of the Pacific Northwest. You will need to give it a light, humus-rich, moist soil, and it might help to give it an old piece of wood decomposing nearby. It will grow well in shade or filtered sun. Bunchberry may be a slow starter, but once it has established it can grow moderately fast, spreading by rhizomes (underground stems) to form patches 6 inches to 8 inches high.

What's cool about this plant? Bunchberry has a unique mechanism for distributing its pollen. Each flower has a tiny antenna projecting from one petal of an unopened bud. When the pollen is ripe, an insect flying by will bump the antenna causing the flowers to open suddenly and release their pollen in a small explosion, covering the insect in a pollen cloud.

The insect pollinator then carries the pollen to surrounding plants. You won't hear these tiny explosions as you walk through the woods, or your own garden, but it's fun to think of nature working in such interesting ways.

Cynthia Spurgeon is affiliated with the Washington Native Plant Society: cspurgeon@msn.com.