December 30, 2007 - Winter Reds Welcome to the Nature Notebook. One native plant appears to celebrate the holiday season with bright red berries. On a drab winter day these eye-catching fruit look like tiny ornaments hung on leafless branches. This is winterberry holly or American winterberry. Unlike evergreen hollies, winterberry sheds its leaves each autumn. Winterberry grows in wetlands and offers its densely packed berries as gifts to small mammals, songbirds and game birds. You might find eastern bluebirds, wild turkeys or white-tailed deer enjoying these fruits. Once known as “fever bush,” winterberry served Native Americans as a treatment for winter fevers. Today, winterberry is used as a landscape plant offering its red fruits just in time for the holidays. Look for this native shrub in your travels. You can hardly miss its festive red berries, eye catchers not only for us, but also for birds and mammals. This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.