Squawvine

Mitchella repens, the partridgeberry or squawvine, is a small evergreen prostrate perennial herb in the family Rubiaceae native to the deciduous forests of eastern North America, from Newfoundland and Quebec south to Florida and Texas, with a disjunct population in eastern Asia. The plant forms creeping trailing stems 15-30 cm long that root at the nodes to produce open mats on the forest floor. The leaves are opposite, evergreen, broadly ovate to almost rounded, 1-2 cm long, dark glossy green with a pale whitish midvein, and have entire margins and short petioles. The flowers are borne in pairs at the stem tips, each pair sharing a fused inferior ovary; the two corollas are tubular, white tinged with pink or purple, 1-1.5 cm long, with four spreading densely bearded lobes, and the species is heterostylous with long-styled and short-styled forms on separate plants. After pollination the two ovaries fuse to produce a single small, scarlet, edible berry 6-10 mm across bearing two darker eye-like scars from the paired flowers. The berries persist on the plant through autumn and winter, providing food for woodland birds and small mammals.