This California native plant is an aromatic, evergreen shrub that typically grows 8 to 10 feet tall with a stout, short trunk and many spreading branches. The leaves are mid to dark green with a leathery texture, flat to slightly enrolled with a margin that usually has small sharp teeth and the petioles and central leaf veins are often attractively maroon to pink tinged.
Rhus integrifolia can also be used as a landscape shrub and is suitable for hedging and espalier. The plant is vulnerable to frost, but often the plant will regrow by summer, after it appears to have died from cold.
The small flowers, in tightly grouped clusters, are white to rose-pink in color and bloom at the tips of branches from February to May. The fruit is a sticky, flattish drupe that is covered with a fine reddish-brown down, inside of which is a hard stone of a seed about 1/4 inch long. Plant in full sun to light, or even dense shade. It is drought tolerant once established and cold hardy to 10°F.
It can also be kept smaller by regular light pruning and can even be trained as a formal hedge. If this plant becomes too big or too lanky, give it a hard pruning, even to the ground in late winter, and this plant will resprout new shoots rapidly.
Use care when pruning as this sumac relative has sap that can cause a rash. Lemonade Berry is found growing naturally below 2,600 feet in coastal sage scrub and chaparral on dry, mostly open-facing slopes from Santa Barbara county to Baja.
The sticky substance covering the fruit tastes like bitter lemons, which gives the plant its name.
The berries are edible and can also be used for lemonade. Lemonade berry is also good for erosion control. The fruit is consumed by roadrunners and many upland gamebirds, songbirds, large and small mammals. Also provides a special value to native bees.
Medicine: Tea made from the stems can be used to treat coughs. The tea made from the bark, berries, or leaves steeped in cold water can be gargled for sore throats and cold sores, or you can drink it to alleviate diarrhea or urinary problems (best to use leaves for the latter). Best suited for zones 8-10.