September 12, 2010 - Berry Red
Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

Yellow and red are the colors of the day for a forest shrub known as spicebush. Bright red berries stand out against a backdrop of golden yellow leaves. These shiny red berries are called drupes, a fancy botanical word for a fleshy fruit with a single seed. Cherries, peaches and plums are other examples of drupes. Spicebush grows wild along streams, in damp woodlands and in thickets. Spicebush berries are food for a variety of animals. American Robins, Gray Catbirds, Eastern Kingbirds, Great Crested Flycatchers and some woodpeckers eat the fruit. Raccoons and opossums enjoy them, too. These small drupes often disappear rather quickly when a flock of migrating birds settles down to feed and refuel before pushing farther south. Birds deposit the seeds away from the original tree where they might sprout and grow into new spicebushes.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.