Brazilian Pepper

Florida holly, Christmasberry - and the most widespread invasive plant in Florida, on the state Noxious Weed List. It forms impenetrable evergreen thickets, birds spread its red winter berries everywhere, and its sap and smoke irritate skin and airways.

How to recognize it: an evergreen, many-stemmed, arching shrub with alternate compound leaves of 5-13 toothed leaflets on a reddish, often-winged stalk, turpentine-scented when crushed, with white fall flowers and glossy red December berries.

Nobody should plant Brazilian pepper and in Florida nobody legally may, so identification is the whole job. It is an evergreen shrub or leaning small tree, usually 10 to 25 feet, almost always many-stemmed, with limbs that arch out and root-tangle into a genuinely impenetrable thicket. The leaves are alternate and compound, with roughly 5 to 13 leaflets — most often 7 or 9 — that are oblong, finely toothed along the edge, and set along a reddish central stalk that is often narrowly winged. Crush one and it smells strongly of turpentine or black pepper. That smell plus the winged leaf stalk is the fastest confirmation in the field.

It flowers in fall, in branched sprays of tiny white flowers, and because male and female flowers are on separate plants, only some of the thicket carries fruit. Female plants ripen dense clusters of small, glossy, bright red berries in December and January. The name “Florida holly” is the usual source of confusion, and it is easy to settle: true hollies have simple, undivided leaves, never compound ones. Its close relative Peruvian pepper (Schinus molle), planted in California and the Southwest, has a weeping habit and much narrower leaflets. Understanding its biology explains the rest of this page — evergreen and shade-casting, tolerant of drought and flooding and brackish edges, spread by birds over long distances, and quick to sprout from any cut stump.

How it spreads: female plants set huge crops of bird-dispersed red berries that germinate on any open ground, and cut or damaged plants resprout hard from stumps, roots, and layered limbs - so a plain cut multiplies it.

Brazilian pepper spreads first and foremost by seed carried by birds. A mature female plant sets thousands of berries; robins, catbirds, mockingbirds, and other fruit-eaters gorge on them through the winter and drop the seed across the landscape, which is why seedling lines appear under wires, fences, and perch trees far from any parent plant. Raccoons and other mammals move seed as well, and water carries it along canals and tidal creeks. The seed is short-lived compared with many invaders — most of it does not persist for years in the soil — but the annual rain of fresh seed is so heavy that this makes little practical difference until you have removed the fruiting plants in the whole neighborhood.

It also holds ground vegetatively. Cut it and the stump and roots throw up a ring of vigorous sprouts; the arching limbs layer where they touch soil, so a thicket creeps outward on its own; and damaged plants come back faster than the seedlings around them. Add a dense evergreen canopy that shades out almost everything beneath it, and stands become effectively single-species and self-maintaining. That combination — long-distance bird dispersal plus hard resprouting — is why control has to shut off the seed source and kill the roots at the same time, and why cutting alone reliably makes a stand thicker than it was.

Control only: pull seedlings, cut-stump or basal-bark treat anything larger (it resprouts), take out fruiting females first, use an aquatic-labelled product with permits or a licensed applicator near water, and never burn it.

Match the method to the size. Seedlings under a foot pull cleanly from wet soil, roots and all — the cheapest control this plant offers, and worth walking for every few weeks through the wet season. Anything larger needs the roots killed: cut it low and treat the fresh stump surface within minutes, or use a basal-bark application on stems under about four to six inches, or treat regrowth foliage. Whatever product you use, it must be one whose label lists the site you are treating, and you must follow that label — rate, protective equipment, buffers, and restrictions are all legally binding, and the label is the only reliable instruction sheet for the product in your hand.

Water changes the rules. Brazilian pepper grows on canal banks, ditch edges, tidal creeks, and mangrove fringe, and treating a plant standing in or over water is a different job: it requires a product specifically labelled for aquatic sites, and in Florida such work commonly requires a permit and often a licensed applicator, particularly on public land, in wetlands, or in mangroves, which have their own protections. Contact your water management district, county extension office, or the state before you start — do not treat a shoreline plant with a general-purpose landscape product.

Sequence the work: take out the berry-bearing female plants first, then the males, then keep after seedlings and sprouts for several years. Bag fruiting cut material and dispose of it under local rules rather than piling, chipping, or hauling it elsewhere; Florida restricts moving the plant at all. Never burn it — the smoke is a serious respiratory irritant. Wear gloves, long sleeves, and eye protection throughout. Then replant natives that do the same jobs better: cocoplum, Simpson's stopper, myrsine, wax myrtle, firebush, Walter's viburnum, or dahoon and yaupon holly for red winter berries without the invasion.

Not a food, and not a home spice crop: pink peppercorns come from this genus but through a regulated trade, and the fruit can trigger reactions in anyone sensitive to cashew, mango or poison ivy. Ecologically it is a near-total loss.

The question this page gets is a fair one: are these the pink peppercorns? Sort of, and the answer is still no. The pink peppercorns sold as a spice come from this genus — mostly the Peruvian pepper Schinus molle, and in part from Brazilian pepper — through a commercial supply chain with its own sourcing and handling. That is not a licence to strip the berries off the shrub in your yard. Because these plants sit in the cashew and mango family, people sensitive to cashew, pistachio, mango skin, or poison ivy can react to the fruit, sometimes badly; eaten in quantity the berries cause vomiting and diarrhea; and in Florida the plant is a listed noxious weed you are not free to gather and move in the first place. This catalog therefore records no edible part for it. Keep children and pets away from the fruit, and if someone eats a quantity of it, call Poison Control.

Ecologically it is close to a total loss. Dense evergreen stands shade the ground to bare litter, chemically and physically suppress what tries to come up, and convert pine flatwoods, hammock edge, and abandoned farmland into single-species scrub. Mangrove fringe and tidal edges are invaded as well, and displaced native shrubs take their insects, and the birds and lizards that eat those insects, with them. The berries do feed birds through the winter — which is precisely the mechanism of its spread, not a redeeming feature. Removing it and putting cocoplum, myrsine, wax myrtle, or a native holly in its place is among the highest-value swaps a South Florida yard can make.

Brought to Florida in the 1800s and sold as ornamental 'Florida holly' well into the twentieth century, it exploded across abandoned farmland - and is now the target of one of the largest and longest invasive-plant control programs in the country.

Brazilian pepper arrived in Florida in the 1800s as an ornamental and was still being sold and planted as “Florida holly” well into the twentieth century, valued for evergreen foliage and a heavy crop of red berries in time for Christmas. It found in South Florida a climate close to home and no meaningful controls, and it took off in the middle of the century, particularly across land that had been farmed and abandoned — the most-cited case being the Hole-in-the-Donut, a block of former farmland inside Everglades National Park that turned into a near-solid Brazilian pepper forest and has since become one of the largest and costliest habitat restorations in the United States.

The response has been long and expensive: it was added to the Florida Noxious Weed List, making it unlawful to introduce, possess, move, or sell without a permit, and public agencies have spent decades and enormous sums cutting, treating, and re-treating it. Since 2019, Florida has also released host-specific biological control insects — a thrips, and later a leaf-galling psyllid — that damage Brazilian pepper and appear to be slowing it in some areas. Biocontrol is a long game and it will not clear a fence line for you. The arc is the familiar one: a shrub planted for its Christmas berries, spread by the birds that ate them, and now a permanent line item in the state budget.

Confirm it (compound toothed leaflets on a winged reddish stalk, turpentine smell, red December berries), never burn it, cut and treat rather than cut, get a permit and an aquatic-labelled product near water, and replant natives.

Is this Brazilian pepper or a holly? Hollies have simple, undivided leaves. Brazilian pepper has compound leaves — 5 to 13 toothed leaflets along a reddish, often narrowly winged stalk — and crushed leaves smell of turpentine or pepper. Red berries in December on a compound-leaved evergreen shrub is your answer. Is it legal to have on my property? Florida lists it as a noxious weed and restricts introducing, possessing, moving, and selling it; the practical reading for a homeowner is that you should be removing it, not moving or sharing it. Check the current state rule and your county's guidance. Can I burn the brush pile? No. The smoke is a serious eye and airway irritant. Bag and dispose of it under local rules. I cut it and it came back thicker. Expected — cut stumps and roots sprout hard. Cut low and treat the fresh stump immediately, or basal-bark small stems, always on-label. It is growing on my canal bank or in mangroves. That is aquatic work: you need a product labelled for aquatic sites, and in Florida usually a permit and often a licensed applicator, especially near mangroves. Call your water management district or extension office first. I got a rash cutting it. Same family as poison ivy and cashew; wash with soap and water, treat as contact dermatitis, and wear gloves, sleeves, and eye protection next time. Can I use the berries as pink peppercorns? No — allergy cross-reactivity, real toxicity in quantity, and a legal restriction on moving the plant. What should I plant instead? Cocoplum, Simpson's stopper, myrsine, wax myrtle, firebush, Walter's viburnum, or dahoon or yaupon holly.

A frost-limited subtropical invader (roughly zones 9-11): dominant through central and South Florida and the Gulf Coast, held back by hard freezes to the north, and creeping upward as freezes become rarer.

Brazilian pepper is a subtropical plant, comfortable in roughly zones 9 to 11, and cold is the only thing that has ever seriously limited it. It dominates central and South Florida, runs along the Gulf Coast into Texas, and is invasive in Hawaii, coastal and southern California, parts of Arizona, and Puerto Rico. Hard freezes kill young plants and knock back mature ones, which is broadly why it thins out through north Florida and does not hold the lower Southeast the way it holds the peninsula.

Within that range it is remarkably indifferent to conditions. It grows in sand, muck, limestone rock, and fill; tolerates drought once established and standing water for periods; handles salt spray and brackish edges well enough to invade mangrove fringe and tidal creek banks; and thrives in full sun while persisting in shade. Disturbance is its accelerator — abandoned farmland, fill and spoil, graded lots, canal banks, and storm-damaged ground all fill with it. Two trends push it further: fewer and milder hard freezes extending its northern edge, and more frequent storm disturbance opening ground for it. The guidance does not change: never plant it, learn the winged leaf stalk and the turpentine smell, take out fruiting plants first, treat rather than merely cut, and get the right permits and an aquatic-labelled product before you touch anything standing in water.