The scarlet of common barberry 
Steel blue of the Symplocos 
A SURPRISING RANGE OF COLOR AND STRUCTURE UNCONVENTIONALLY DESCRIBED 
AND INTERPRETED — WHAT A BERRY IS—THE WHEREFORE OF ITS PECULIAR 
ARRANGEMENT—HOW TO DISPOSE OF BERRIES BOTH INDOORS AND OUTDOORS 
by Antoinette Reiimann Perrett 
V ERY few people have any idea of the great variety of colored 
berries that follow the succession of bloom of the flowering 
shrubs, and yet this is knowledge that yields much pleasurable 
return both in the house and garden. We have taken photo¬ 
graphs of some of the berries as we arranged them in our home 
vases to suggest their decorative value in the house, and in doing 
so we are only sorry that their lovely color is lost. There are, 
for instance, the steel blue berries of the Symplocos, such a won- 
drously brilliant blue it fairly makes your heart beat higher. There 
are the flat clusters of the Viburnum cassinoides, in September a 
warm cream tinged with rose, and in October a bright rose alter¬ 
nating with the blue of the ripened berries. We have placed 
them in a vase of light golden brown streaked with darker browns 
and then again softened by a misty haze of grey, a vase that not 
only adds significance to the rose and blue of the berries, but 
hightens the charm of the thick olive-green leaves. The wands 
of coral-berries growing in the axils of the flight-poised leaves 
are in a German jug of blue and white. The scarlet Japanese 
barberries in a hammered copper, the dull black berries of Regel's 
privet in a common ginger jar of bluish green lightened around 
the top with gleams of turquoise. The brilliant scarlet of the 
black alder is in a pewter-topped vase of green and blue pottery. 
You will notice that a number of the berries like the sumach 
spikes, the graceful wands of the snowberries, the haze-covered, 
rose red of the common barberry and the deep red, translucent, 
pearl-shaped fruit of the matrimony vine are all in curious-shaped 
vases of this same pottery. We happened upon it one time while 
we were visiting the quaint, mediaeval city of Bruges, and brought 
it home with us because its various soft coloring, including all 
sorts of soft greens, browns and purples, makes a quiet and yet 
not monotonous color scheme against our grey-green burlap walls 
and our dark-brown oak woodwork. It is in quiet rooms of this 
kind and in simple pottery and metal vases that the shrub berries 
are, perhaps, most effective. 
One of the surprising things, at first acquaintance, about the 
berries is their variety of colors. Of course, a great many, like 
the Japanese barberry, the black alder, the chokeberry, the high- 
bush cranberry, the June-berry, the matrimony vine, the American 
yew, like the haws of the thorns and the hips of the roses, are red. 
Many, too, like the various privet berries, the inkberry, the dog- 
berry, like the berries of the honeysuckle vine and the Rhodotvpos, 
are black. The snowberries are white, and so are the berries of 
the red-stemmed and panicled dogwoods. The Eleagnus is a kind 
of greyish white. The Hyppophcca, or sea-buckthorn, is a trans- 
Trailing stems and clustered hips, packed with tiny fruit, characterize the Rosa 
seligera 
The matrimony vine bears abundant deep-red, translucent fruit, shaped like drop 
pearls 
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