BERRIES OF THE WOODS. 



There are no flowers to make the earth 

 gay in winter, but the berries, vivid, scar- 

 let, Hke a note of exclamation or empha- 

 sis, hght up the somber browns and 

 grays of the woods and marshes. Jack- 

 in-the-pulpit now shows a brilHant clus- 

 ter, 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 ad- 

 mirable membe;* of the Ilex family with 

 red berries whirled most gracefully 

 around its stem, is the winterberry or 

 black alder. Its foliage is less beauti- 

 ful 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 load- 

 ed 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 clus- 

 ters. 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, especi- 

 ally 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-cover- 

 ing ; 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 slen- 

 der stems, called the snow or coral ber- 

 ry. 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 honey- 

 suckles bear berries ; the local honey- 

 suckle is almost as brilliant in the season 

 of fruit as when it blooms, but the Chi- 

 nese 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. Oth- 

 er birds also love them and the trees are 

 crowded till the migration is over. 



The pale blue adar berries are as fra- 

 grant 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 ber- 

 ries 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. 



31 



