BERBERRY

(Lat. berberis.) A spiny shrubby plant, bearing yellow flowers, and succulent one-celled fruit growing in racemes. It is one of a genus in which the fruit is universally fleshy and acid, although often le so than in the common kind {Berberis vulgar is). Some of the species have pinnated leaves, many are evergreens, and several have a black fruit; even the common sort has a variety of this description, as well as others with pale yellow and stonele fruit. There is an idea among people in the country that a berberry bush brings blight to a wheat field; but the parasitical lung us which attacks the berberry is altogether different from that which produces the mildew of wheat, which cannot po ibly be communicated by the one to the other. BERGAMOT, [s. 156]