A spreading shrub with several cultivated varieties. Usually pink or red flowered. The leaves are usually opposite or whorled. The flowers are usually pendulous with 4 petals, 4 sepals and 8 stamens. The fruit is a juicy berry containing numerous small seeds. 

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Principally found as a planted hedge or in the gardens of abandoned cottages but also naturalised in hedgerows, scrub, by streams and amongst rocks and on walls.

In flower during June, July, August and September.

Reproduction is by suckering.

Mainly with a northern and western distribution in Britain, infrequent in the wild elsewhere.

Rarely recorded in Leicestershire and Rutland, the first VC55 record came from Grace Dieu in 2008.