Cotoneaster franchetii
Environmental Weed (2024)
Common names
cotoneaster, Franchet’s cotoneaster
Biostatus
Exotic
Category
Vascular
Structural class
Trees & Shrubs - Dicotyledons
Simplified description
Widely branched shrub with arching branchlets, foliage conspicuously grey from a distance (young leaves densely hairy on both surfaces and remaining white-felted below when mature). Flowers with pink erect petals. Fruit orange with 3-5 pyrenes.
Flower colours
Red/Pink
Detailed description
Evergreen shrub up to c. 3 m high; stems spreading and often somewhat arching; young shoots pale buff-tomentose, later becoming dark reddish brown. Leaves up to 35 x 18 mm, more or less shining and finely pilose with impressed veins above, usually with white to grey woolly tomentum (rarely pale buff) below. Flowers in clusters of 7-15 scattered along branches, Petals erect and pink. Fruit ellipsoid, oblong-obovoid, obovoid, or subglobose, 5-9 mm long, scarlet or orange scarlet.
Similar taxa
Has been confused with C. pannosus, but that species has flowers with spreading petals and almost always has 2 pyrenes (‘seeds’) per fruit, whereas C. franchetii has flowers with erect petals and mostly has 3 (up to 5) pyrenes per fruit.
Habitat
Terrestrial. Outcompetes native shrub species in a wide variety of habitats. Usually dry forest and shrubland up to 300 m, forest margins, dry rangeland, bluffs, rocky sites, slips, riverbeds.
Conservation status
Not applicable
Detailed taxonomy
Family
Rosaceae
Ecology
Flowering
November, December, January
Year naturalised
1958
Origin
China
Reason for introduction
Ornamental
Tolerances
Very tolerant of damp and drought, hot and cold, salt, and a range of soils.
Life cycle and dispersal
Perennial. Very long lived. Large numbers of viable seed are produced in each fruit. Fruit are readily dispersed by birds.
Other information
Etymology
cotoneaster: From cotoneus an old Latin name for the quince, and possibly aster, corruption of adinstar ‘resembling’, i.e. quince-like
Environmental Weed (2024)
This plant is named in a list of 386 environmental weeds in New Zealand 2024 prepared by DOC. 759 candidate species were considered for inclusion on this new comprehensive list of environmental weeds in New Zealand. The species considered were drawn from published lists of weed species, lists of plants that must be reported or managed by law if observed, existing national and regional programmes and agreements for pest management, and species already managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC). Candidate species were then assessed to see if they were fully naturalised and whether they have more than minor impacts in natural ecosystems. Read the full report here.
Manaaki Whenua Online Interactive Key
NVS code
The National Vegetation Survey (NVS) Databank is a physical archive and electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots - including data from over 19,000 permanent plots. NVS maintains a standard set of species code abbreviations that correspond to standard scientific plant names from the Ngä Tipu o Aotearoa - New Zealand Plants database.
COTFRA