Interesting facts

The generic name Berberis is derived from the Arabic word berberi = shell and describes the shape of the petals.
Incidentally, the flowers use an amazing trick for distributing pollen. As soon as a bee enters the nectar-rich flower and touches the stamens the latter spring inwards spraying their pollen over the bee, which thus pollinates the next flower it visits.
In the former Austrian monarchy the fruits were used to make a preserve taken in tea and acid drops called Weinscharl. The latter are still obtainable today from the k.u.k. Hofzuckerbäckerei Demel in Vienna. The Persians season meat and rice dishes with barberry fruits cooked in oil and sugar.
Barberry is a traditional dyer's plant. The bark of the roots and the trunk can be used to dye untreated wool, cotton and silk bright yellow. Traditional wooden toys made in Nuremberg were occasionally painted with a dye made from the bark. The juice pressed from the fruits dyes leather, wool, cotton, linen and silk pink with no mordant and carmine with a tin mordant. The juice is also used to make an ink and a food dye. The juice of the roots is used as a fluorescent dye in microscopy.
For a long time farmers used to plant barberry hedges as field boundaries. However, in the 1960s, when it was realized that barberry was an intermediate host of black rust (Puccina gramminis), a fungus that damages wheat, most of the barberry bushes in Germany fell victim to the axe.