Dead man's fingers

What strange fruits this shrub has! They ripen in October at the Jardin botanique de Montréal, just in time for Halloween.

A truly evocative name

The Decaisnea fargesii is a shrub that also goes by the names blue sausage fruit, blue bean shrub and even, somewhat gruesome, dead man’s fingers.

And in fact, imagining fingers is easy when you look at the unusual appearance of the fruit: stretched out like long beans, turning soft and blue when ripe, the leatherlike skin – all of it reminds us of cold, blue fingers.

Unassuming blooms and remarkable fruit

The flowers of the dead man’s fingers shrub are inconspicuous and often go unnoticed. Made up of six greenish sepals, they're grouped together in long clusters.

But it’s the blue fruit that grab our attention. Each flower can produce three of them. Green at first, they gradually take on a bluish color. When ripe, they open lengthwise, revealing numerous black seeds contained in a translucid, mucilaginous jelly-like pulp.

The dead man’s fingers shrub at the Jardin botanique

The shrub stands upright and displays leaves arranged alternately on the stems. They’re composed of 13 to 15 leaflets. A native of China and the Himalayan region, it can reach a width of three meters and five meters in height, under appropriate conditions. At the Jardin botanique it rarely grows taller than two to three meters.

The shrub Decaisnea fargesii is considered hardy in zone 7. Meaning it’s beyond its hardiness limit in Montréal. It’s often damaged by the cold, even when situated in a spot sheltered from the wind at the back of the Shrub Garden. The shoots are sensitive to frost, and some years the shrub has to be cut back to ground level. It grows back from the base in springtime, but flowering and fruiting are often compromised.

Botanists also recognize another species, Decaisnea insignis, native to the eastern Himalayas and Myanmar, which produces yellow fruits. Even less hardy than D. fargesii, it won’t be found in the Jardin botanique’s collection.

Who knows? During the fall, when visiting the Shrub Garden, you might get the chance to observe the unmistakable fruit of the dead man’s fingers shrub – fully deserving of a place in a Halloween tale!