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| Berries of Dogwood, Cornus sanguinea, on Burnt Gorse at High Elms Country Park, 22 August 2011. |
The countryside is full of berries now. These are on dogwood, a small shrub that is found in ancient woodlands and in hedges. Bushes related to this are often grown as garden plants for their brightly coloured stems.
The hawthorn, below, is a very common shrub or small tree. Its value in a hedgerow is that it grows fast and puts out many thorny branches. These berries, called haws, are everywhere. In fact where I grew up, near Newcastle, countryside berries were generally referred to as hips and haws - fruits of wild rose and hawthorn.
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| Berries of Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna. Scadbury Park, 11 September 2011. |
When I saw the hawthorns, I immediately thought of cotoneaster in California, whose red berries often substituted for the holly that we lacked in San Luis Obispo. And Wikipedia, q.v., s.v. cotoneaster says in fact that they are related.
ReplyDeleteOur dogwoods, of the many species, are the florida one and yours looks like Wikipedia's canadensis, which does have berries.
Our pyrocanthus is very thorny, cruelly so, and in that respect like your hawthorn, good for major hedgerows.