Going, going, soon be gone! Given the voracious appetites of birds in the colder weather, those berries than still remain will soon be gone. So, I thought we’d have a change from wildflowers this week and, instead, enjoy some bright berry colours (and hips and haws and other berry-type fruit) before they all disappear into hungry mouths and beaks.
As the days grow noticeably shorter and the leaves being to turn, bursts of colour adorn the trees, shrubs and hedgerows, and help to feed hungry critters, birds, insects … and, occasionally, me, if the blackberries look lush and bursting with flavour.
This was @wildflower_hour’s tweet announcing this week’s #WildflowerHour challenge:
Samaras, siliques, nuts, drupes, berries, hips and capsules, how many different types of wild fruit can you find? That’s the challenge this week for #WildflowerHour. Share your pics this Sunday 8-9pm using the hashtag #fruits.
I’m saving my samaras, siliques, nuts and capsules for another day but here are my drupes, berries and hips: an assortment of Black bryony, Bramble, Buckthorn, Crab apple, Dewberry, Red-osier dogwood (with vivid red stems and white fruit) and Common dogwood, Guelder rose, Hawthorn, the hips of Japanese rose (these grow wild at the local country park) and Dog-rose, Sloe, Whitebeam, Woody nightshade and Yew.
Here are more of the beautiful ‘Christmas decorations’ currently adorning the otherwise-dreary December countryside, courtesy of Ma Nature, and some of these are even edible, by birds and animals if not necessarily by humans.
‘On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung
like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels …’
~ Charles Dickens, Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, chapter 2
I’ve been planning a ‘berry’ blog for a while and have been photographing all the lovely berries I’ve seen while out on my wanders but then, in the process of collecting together my various photos for this blog, I began to wonder what actually is a berry? Is a berry a fruit? Should I include hips and haws? Should I only include the fruits of those plants that have berry in their name? At that point, I gave up and decided a berry by any other name would look as pretty and I would include all the lovely reddish-coloured things I’ve seen growing on assorted trees, bushes and plants, whether they be berries, drupes, hips, haws, pomes, or just plain fruit. So here you go …
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