Shocking pink in a winter hedge, as if blown from some forever summer place, it is a colour out of season. And yet the spindle berries are perfectly at home in wood margins and hedges on the limestone of Wenlock Edge. It has waxy, serrated-edge leaves, greeny-white four-petalled flowers and these extraordinary lipstick berries, each a four- or five-valved pod holding orange fruits that ripen in November-December. The orange fruits in the pink capsule contain alkaloids, theobromine and caffeinethat can induce a Sleeping Beauty coma, or worse; but for birds they offer the most nutritious of native fruits. For the moment, the little pink palaces dangle temptingly, baubles on a wind-shriven hedge that will drop in the next storm or snowfall.

Source: The Guardian December 06, 2017 05:26 UTC