Barberry: The Tart Berry of Persian Rice, and a Host of Wheat Stem Rust

For decades, governments tried to wipe out the common barberry. The shrub hosts a stage of the fungus behind stem rust of wheat, and the United States started a federal eradication program in 1918. Cooks know barberries very differently: as small, sharply tart berries from shrubs in the genus Berberis, best known through Iranian food. There, the dried red berries, zereshk, get warmed in butter and scattered over saffron rice.

At a glance

What barberry is

Britannica counts almost 500 species of Berberis: thorny evergreen or deciduous shrubs with yellow wood and yellow six-petaled flowers, native mostly to the north temperate zone and especially Asia. Depending on the species, the fruit is a red, yellow, blue, purple or black berry with one to several seeds.

A few barberries matter to cooks and gardeners:

• Common or European barberry, Berberis vulgaris, a shrub native from Europe to western and northern Iran, including Morocco and Algeria. Encyclopaedia Iranica names it and B. integerrima as the main species in Iran, where barberries grow in the northern, eastern and southeastern highlands.
• American or Allegheny barberry, B. canadensis, native to eastern North America. The common barberry you’ll find in North America came over with early settlers from Europe.
• Japanese barberry, B. thunbergii, grown as a hedge and ornamental shrub.
• Oregon grape. Sometimes called barberry, but its species now sit in a separate genus, Mahonia.

Seedless barberry

The barberry grown commercially in Iran is a seedless type. A 2025 study of seedless barberry fruit, which identifies the plant as B. vulgaris, says it started in South Khorasan Province and spread from there to other regions. The same paper, citing a 2021 source, reports Iran as the largest producer of seedless barberry, at more than 22,322 tonnes of dried berries.¹ It doesn’t say which year that figure covers, and we couldn’t find a FAOSTAT figure for barberry.

Flavor

Barberries taste sour first, with a little fruitiness behind the acid. Dried, they’re chewy and tart. Most of that acid is malic: the 2025 study reports malic acid as the dominant organic acid in ripe barberry fruit.¹ The same study notes that the fruit’s anthocyanin pigments have drawn interest as a possible food additive. Iranica says the berries give soups a pleasant tartness.

How barberries are used

In Iran

Encyclopaedia Iranica records barberries in soups and polows, and in chicken stuffing. For zereshk polow, washed barberries are sprinkled over strained boiled rice. A barberry sherbet, made from the water drained off barberries plus sugar, is traditionally thought to help get rid of bile.²

Nadia Sajadi’s version of zereshk polow for SBS’s Food Safari calls it “celebration rice,” often cooked for weddings, and serves it with chicken. She rinses the dried barberries, sautés them for a few minutes in butter, then stirs in sugar and saffron water, using 2 tablespoons of sugar for a cup of dried berries.³ How sweet you make them is up to you.

Elsewhere

Britannica notes that the fruits of several species are made into jellies. Past that, barberries can stand in for dried cranberries or currants anywhere you want a sharper, less sweet note: grain salads, stuffings, pilafs and baked goods.

History

Barberry and wheat rust

Barberry’s place in farming history comes from stem rust. The rust that shows up on barberry leaves in spring is the same fungus that causes stem rust on small grain cereals later in the season. Farmers suspected the link long before anyone proved it:

• 1660. Rouen, France, passed a law outlawing barberry bushes.⁴
• 1726 to 1766. Connecticut passed the earliest such local law in the Americas in 1726, followed by Massachusetts (1754) and Rhode Island (1766). Enforcement lapsed as wheat growing declined in New England.
• Proof. Nearly 200 years after the Rouen law, the German scientist A. de Bary proved that the spring rust on barberry was the same fungus as cereal stem rust.
• 1918. A cooperative federal and state barberry eradication program started in the United States, headed by E. C. Stakman. Susceptible barberries found in the eradication area were destroyed.⁴
• 1975 to 1980. The federal eradication program was gradually wound down, leaving the states in charge. The federal program still tests new barberry cultivars and species for rust resistance and inspects bushes in commercial trade.

Britannica notes that growing certain barberry species is still banned in some regions for this reason.

Other history

You’ll see several claims about barberry’s past that we couldn’t trace to a source we opened, so we’re not repeating them as fact: that it’s been used in Chinese medicine for 3,000 years; an Italian legend that it formed Christ’s crown of thorns; famines in 10th-century Spain caused by barberry-borne rust; a preserving recipe in Hannah Woolley’s 17th-century The Gentlewoman’s Companion; and that Native Americans taught European settlers its uses.

Buying and storage

Dried barberries are often sold under the Persian name zereshk. Look for bright red berries, not dark, brownish ones, and pick through them for stems and grit. Recipes like Sajadi’s rinse them before cooking. The color tip is a rule of thumb, not a published standard. Many cooks keep dried barberries in the fridge or freezer to hold their color. We couldn’t find a published shelf-life figure.

Health and safety

Barberry plants contain berberine, a yellow alkaloid. Encyclopaedia Iranica says the yellow dye called berberine is extracted from the wood and bark,² and none of the sources we checked measured berberine in the berries you’d cook with.

According to NCCIH, berberine itself has been studied for its effects on blood sugar, blood cholesterol, body weight and other outcomes, and NCCIH doesn’t say it’s effective for any condition. It also warns that berberine can be harmful to newborns.⁵ That warning comes from its information on goldenseal, another berberine-containing plant. We found no regulator guidance specific to barberry.

Traditional Persian medicine credited barberries with clearing excess bile and strengthening the stomach, liver and heart.² Those are historical beliefs, not findings, and we’re not claiming barberries prevent or treat any disease.

Substitutes and related pages

See barberry substitutes for options ranked by job. For another sour, fruity ingredient from the same region, see sumac. Zereshk polow recipes like Sajadi’s also use saffron. See also advieh.