There are no flowers to make the earth gay in winter, but the berries,
vivid, scarlet, like a note of exclamation or emphasis, light up the
somber browns and grays of the woods and marshes. Jack-in-the-pulpit now
shows a brilliant cluster, the Uncle Spadix completely hidden by the
flaming berries. It is as if Jack had forsaken his pulpit altogether and
turned to a rollicking life in the world. We know quite well without
seeing the birds feed on any special variety of berry that they like
them, for in the economy of thrifty Dame Nature these vivid colors of
the outer cases are signals—calls to a feast, with the prudent condition
that thus the seeds shall be carried abroad.
Holly stands at the head of all the berry tribe, royal by virtue not
only of its shining clusters of fruit, but its glossy leaves, deep cut
on the edges, that keep their beauty so long. It is usually a shrub, but
in the mountains where the conditions are favorable it towers aloft as a
tree. Another less famous, yet admirable member of the Ilex family with
red berries whirled most gracefully around its stem, is the winterberry
or black alder. Its foliage is less beautiful than that of the holly,
but its berries are as brilliant. There are different splendors for
North and South. In the North, when the white frosts fall the prickly
barberry bushes are already loaded with their tart scarlet berries, and
the old fences are rich with the fruit of the choke cherry. In the damp
places of Southern woods the spice berries of the Laurel family are
shining in small clusters. You are drawn by another sense in this case,
for the berries are not only pleasing to the eye; they have also a
delightfully pungent fragrance, especially when the scarlet skin is
broken, and shows the yellow pulp inside.
The staff-tree, shrubby bitter-sweet or strawberry tree—for it has many
names—glows with its odd-looking fruit, consisting of a scarlet aril and
orange-tinted, or crimson pods or seeds. The aril plays a different part
in various plants, though it is always a seed-covering; in the
water-lily it is the transparent seed-bag, in the nutmeg it is the mace,
in the twining strawberry bush it is a pulpy scarlet case; in the shrub
it looks rather like a red chestnut burr, split wide open to show its
gay seeds. There is a low shrub whose dark purplish red berries are
arranged gracefully along its slender stems, called the snow or coral
berry. The latter name suggests a far brighter color than the berries
possess, for they are rarely noticeable until the winter snows have
turned the earth white and by contrast made them attractive. This
belongs to the Honeysuckle family and grows abundantly beside roads and
in fence corners. Most of the honeysuckles bear berries; the local
honeysuckle is almost as brilliant in the season of fruit as when it
blooms, but the Chinese and Japanese honeysuckles have berries of glossy
black, easily seen by the birds. The haw and the tupelo also bear black
berries, and it is a pretty sight to see the flowers of gay yellow and
the black sapsuckers just arrived from the North, rejoicing over the
feast of the purple-black clusters of the tupelo. Other birds also love
them and the trees are crowded till the migration is over.
The pale blue adar berries are as fragrant as they are pretty, thickly
clustered in the prickly boughs. The mistletoe (Trees-thief as its Greek
name means) grows upon our great oaks, hanging sprays of pearly or
clouded opaline berries among its strange, thick, yellowish leaves. It
is not the English mistletoe of Christmas stories which grows upon
fir-trees in preference to all others, but is of similar habit.
Ella F. Mosby.