36 HOW TO KNOW WILD FRUITS 



is covered with a hard, brittle coat. The fruit is 

 very acid but is eatable when cooked. It makes 

 a delicious jelly. The berries are eaten by birds 

 and the seeds thrown up from the crop instead 

 of passing through the entire digestive tract. 

 September. 



Leaves. — The leaves seem to grow in rosettes 

 from the axils of the spines. They are oval to 

 obovate and bristly toothed. 



This spiny shrub generally grows in thickets 

 and waste grounds in eastern New England, 

 having become thoroughly wild there. It varies 

 in height from one to six feet. The wood and 

 inner bark are yellow. The spines, in groups of 

 seven or three, are modified leaf structures and 

 protect, against destruction from grazing animals, 

 the fresh shoots, with their leaves or flowers, 

 which grow from their axils. 



The flowers show ingenious arrangements for 

 protecting the pollen against dew or rain, and 

 for securing cross fertilization. The yellow 

 blossoms grow in drooping, many-flowered 

 racemes, and the concave petals of each bloom 

 thus act as a roof for the pollen borne by the 

 stamens which they cover. 



The lower third of each stamen is sensitive to 



