American barberry (berberis canadensis)

We love native plants. We have a good collection of them in our gardens. We are blessed with being able to grow goldenseal at our farm nad in our front yard shade garden. I like having backups. I have been searching for the native barberry for years now it seems. I have enlisted friends from the native plant society in my search. Everyone has come up blank on any source to find the Native plant available for sale. So I am turning here to see if anyone knows of a source to get a Native barberry or can give me a reason Why I can't find them?
My first thought on the lack of Native barberry is they have been overwhelmed by the Japanese varieties. My second thought is that they were a small population that has been pushed to endangered or threatened status by habitat loss and over harvest.
I would love to find a plant to propagate and reestablish. I am at a loss. If anyone has input , information, or what would be awesome , a plant to share I would be grateful. Happy spring y'all.

Depending on where you are located, your efforts to re-establish Common Barberry (Berberis vulgaris....although I suspect Berberis canadensis may be similar enough) may not be so welcomed.  It was the focus of a regional, but intensive, eradication program where wheat is grown (imagine the acreage of wheat production in the North America alone).  This is due to the fact that wheat stem rust (Puccinia graminis) devastated wheat crops in the USA in the early and middle of the 20th century and uses common barberry as an 'alternate' host.  More crucial, barberry is where P. graminis sexually reproduces....and it is through genome recombination of different rust variants via sexual recombination that new, more virulent isolates of the fungus arise.  (The concern over new 'variants' here is no different than our watchfulness over new COVID variants that may be more virulent.)   So decisions were made at the state and federal level to eradicate barberry from large sectors of the continent in order to reduce the risk of our wheat production crashing once again.  (Unfortunately, the article cited below is likely behind a paywall, but there should be other open-access materials regarding this issue.)

If you are in an area for which such plantings would not cause concern, I would search for contacts in non-wheat growing regions and see if some wild stock could be obtained.  Good luck!

The same thing happened in Europe, with Berberis vulgaris. But if I got it right, they dropped the goal of eradicating barberry here, because modern wheat varieties are resistant to the fungus...

Also, a thought. If I understood you correctly, since you mentioned goldenseal, you're looking for a backup source of berberine? Have you considered Oregon grape, Berberis (Mahonia) aquifolium? It's at least native to North America, even if it might not be found locally where you are.

Eino Kenttä wrote:The same thing happened in Europe, with Berberis vulgaris. But if I got it right, they dropped the goal of eradicating barberry here, because modern wheat varieties are resistant to the fungus...

Also, a thought. If I understood you correctly, since you mentioned goldenseal, you're looking for a backup source of berberine? Have you considered Oregon grape, Berberis (Mahonia) aquifolium? It's at least native to North America, even if it might not be found locally where you are.

Thank you. I have a lot more research to do. We are growing oregon grape even though it is not native. I did a bit more digging and the Allegheny barberry isnt local to my area either. At least i have an answer to my question. We may end up having to source a non invasive cultivar. We like having back ups to our back ups.

As far as I can tell, common barberries have negligible invasive tendencies. They tend to be common enough here, but grow one-here-one-there and prefer poor, thin soils in meadows or thin-canopied oak-hickory forests for fruiting. They will grow and persist in degraded pastureland and so on, but so far as I can tell never dominate an ecosystem, rather increasing the diversity through their presence. The birds don’t seem to like them that much, and a few weeks ago I saw many berries still on the bushes (I missed them this year! 😡) shriveled and uneaten; I think they prefer the milder, sweeter taste of multiflora rose hips that ripen at a similar time. Berberis canadensis is not native or naturally occurring here either, but B. vulgaris has been around long enough to know the ways of the land and grow by its rules. In a way perhaps they’re even more native, but maybe also the glaciers pushed out B. canadensis many years ago.

It would be interesting to figure out why the people of old would grow barberry intentionally if wheat was their sustenance or cash crop. Maybe they had habits practices that prevented stem rust that were supplanted when people began to supplant traditional agriculture with scientific.

I’ve also had similar troubles finding the native species of reed, Phragmites americanus, which I’d really like to plant. Some of these maligned native plants (P. americanus was subject to similar extermination measures as P. australis for
a while due to them being lumped together as one species) can be very hard to find. I’m glad that Phaseolus polystachios has gotten the attention they deserve.

Maybe some other permies know some patches of these plants near them?…

Maieshe Ljin wrote:....It would be interesting to figure out why the people of old would grow barberry intentionally if wheat was their sustenance or cash crop. Maybe they had habits practices that prevented stem rust that were supplanted when people began to supplant traditional agriculture with scientific.

It could well be that "brown bagging" some of the previous year's crop to use as seed in the up-coming season worked well when the wheat was more heterogeneous (genetically) and less refined for high-yield.  The breeding in of rust resistance genes continues to this day....utilizing donor pollen from what would be considered more 'wild' wheat varieties/species.  These wild species, and possibly the landraces used by earlier settlements, may have held up better to the rust than newer high-yielding varieties.  In this regard and especially if the barberry was providing something of value to the human communities, they would be selecting within their landrace wheat those that could tolerate the proximity of the barberry stands (i.e., tolerate the rust that their presence was supporting).

Maieshe Ljin wrote:I’ve also had similar troubles finding the native species of reed, Phragmites americanus, which I’d really like to plant. Some of these maligned native plants (P. americanus was subject to similar extermination measures as P. australis for
a while due to them being lumped together as one species) can be very hard to find. I’m glad that Phaseolus polystachios has gotten the attention they deserve.

Maybe some other permies know some patches of these plants near them?…

We have the invasive reed here. I was just reading about its uses and medicinal properties. Good plant even though it is aggressive.

Found one online seller called Quackin Grass Nursery, from Connecticut, but the plant is not currently for sale & this will allegedly be their final year before closing their business.