The flowers and grasses bow the head,
Like children when their prayer is said,
While I with heart and soul rejoice
That a perfect day hath found its voice.
—M. E. Dissette.
BERRIES OF THE WOODS.
There are no flowers to make the earth gay in winter, but the berries, vivid, scarlet, like a note of exclamation or emphasis, light up the somber browns and grays of the woods and marshes. Jack-in-the-pulpit now shows a brilliant cluster, 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 admirable member of the Ilex family with red berries whirled most gracefully around its stem, is the winterberry or black alder. Its foliage is less beautiful 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 loaded 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 clusters. 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, especially 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-covering; 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 slender stems, called the snow or coral berry. 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 honeysuckles bear berries; the local honeysuckle is almost as brilliant in the season of fruit as when it blooms, but the Chinese 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. Other birds also love them and the trees are crowded till the migration is over.
The pale blue adar berries are as fragrant 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 berries 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.