Coralberry flower

About ten years ago a friend of mine gave me a slip of her big coralberry plant. I grew it in my office successfully -- until I accidentally killed it. I had left it unattended through several very cold nights in December.

But I had a dozen or so berries on it, and I planted them around the roots. After about six months, a green shoot came up and it eventually grew into a bigger plant than my original. I don't think it actually came from a berry. More likely it came from the original roots. It was big and healthy and it had dozens of bright red berries.

I brought the plant home two summers ago when I vacated my office at work and I immediately put it on the sunny back deck. In a few hours, birds had eaten every berry. Awww.

I waited for it to bloom again, and it did so pretty often. But no flowers turned into berries.

Last year, a friend suggested dusting the flowers myself, to manually fertilise them. I did so and it worked. This year, I have a ring of bright red berries around the plant (they never fall off or rot), plus a new flush of flowers. Like this one, and these buds waiting to open. The open one is about 7mm across from tip to tip.

And I'm still dusting the flowers by hand.