Better red than dead

The ground is frozen, the leaves are down, and the landscape is a drab gray-brown, relieved occasionally by evergreens. 

Yellow coreopsis flowers turned to brown seedheads--just not the same

There’s one splash of color in the picture: red berries. The wildlife and I appreciate the trees and shrubs whose red fruits stand out at this time of year.

    Right outside the back door, a crab apple, Malus ‘Donald Wyman,’ still holds some small red fruits.

Crab apples at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn producing lots of fruit in full sun

 After we moved our tree from a spot against the back of the house to its current sunnier location, it started to make fruit every other year. Now we see red crab apples among the green leaves in August. The sour fruits aren’t squirrels’ first choice, but as the cold weather sets in, the easy ones to reach disappear, leaving a few bright holdouts on the outer branches. Eventually we see squirrels shimmying along wildly swinging twigs to grab the last few crab apples.

    I’ve been waiting for years to see red berries on a low-growing winterberry, Ilex verticillata ‘Nana’ Red Sprite, not far from the crab apple. A few dozen of them finally appeared this year. This shrub is a deciduous holly that’s native to eastern North America. Because it’s dioecious, I planted a male shrub nearby, a cultivar named ‘Jim Dandy’. Pollen from male holly flowers is needed to fertilize flowers of the female plants to produce the red berries, technically called drupes. A bigger version of this species that’s grown into a small multi-stemmed tree farther back in the yard makes lots of fruit, but birds pick and eat it enthusiastically. By winter, the fruit is mostly gone.

Mockingbird eating winterberry fruit-photo qmnonic

    Birds have visual powers that we lack. Many can see in the violet range, beyond the blues we see, and others can actually perceive ultraviolet light. To see these short wavelengths, birds’ retinas have four types of cones, compared to our three. They also have cell organelles called cone oil droplets, derived from carotenoids in food, which allow retinal cones to shift the range of wavelengths they perceive, like using filters to shift the color values of a digital photo. 

Birds can see ultraviolet light reflecting off waxy berries-photo kdee64

For both birds and humans, red anthocyanin pigment in fruits jumps out in the visual landscape, tempting us to take a bite.

Red is eye-catching

The first freezing weather causes starches in berries to turn to sugar and ferment, so if you see blackbirds that can’t fly straight, they may be drunk on fruit alcohol.

    At this time of year, you’re probably also spotting the small elongated vertical fruits of Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii). 

Japanese barberry-photo Leslie Holzmann

This thorny bush was a landscape darling for a while, but now it’s considered invasive in Massachusetts, and its sale is banned. When I see barberry in parks and conservation areas I worry, because it’s a strong competitor that can edge out native plants. Those pretty red berries are snapped up by birds who spread the seeds around, planting more barberry shrubs. But I have to admit that the bright red berries lift my spirits when everything else is gray and brown.

Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana), another bearer of bright berries