Berry Beauties

     During autumn and into winter, several kinds of berries on abundant vines, shrubs and trees beautify many impenetrable thickets in woodland edges, hedgerows and roadsides.  The vines drape over trees and bushes, which exposes their lovely berries to view. 
     Tear-thumb vines have light-blue berries, triangular-shaped leaves and small, sharp thorns on their stems.  This species is from Asia, but is invasive, and abundant, in much of North America.
     Oriental bittersweet, as its name implies, is also of Asian origin, and invasive.  But it has bright-orange, decorative berries that erupt from yellow husks sometime in October.  Those berries are most noticeable early in November after most deciduous leaves have fallen.  Some people use them in dried arrangements.
     Virginia creeper and poison ivy vines are both native species, and have berries in fall, and beautifully colored leaves.  Creepers have deep-purple berries on short, red stems and red foliage, while poison ivy has dull-white berries and red, yellow or orange leaves.
     Honeysuckle has black berries in autumn, and some leaves that remain green on the vines through winter, providing cover for wildlife.  This species is originally from Asia as its name implies.
     Deadly nightshade is a vine originally from Europe that has red berries in fall.  This species
prefers damp soil and has several colors in summer when it grows.  Its flowers have purple petals and yellow anthers and its berries start out green, but turn yellow, orange and red as they ripen. 
     Wild grape, which is a native of North America, is a vine that has deep-purple, berry-like fruits in abundance.  Grape vines hang in exceptional profusion from trees and shrubbery.
     Multiflora rose, tartarian honeysuckle and Japanese barberry shrubbery bear red berries that are also decorative in thickets through fall and winter.  These bushes, too, are from Asia.  The rose was planted purposefully to provide living fences, which was a mistake because this plant is invasive.
     Pokeweed is bush-like, but is really a perennial that has deep-purple, juicy fruits and red leaves and stems in autumn.  Each May this plant sends up new shoots from its roots and grows rapidly up to eight feet tall by late summer.   
     Sassafras, staghorn sumac and Bradford pear trees bear berries, and berry-like fruit in the case of the pears, in autumn.  And those kinds of smaller trees have strikingly colored foliage in fall as well.  Sassafras have yellow, orange and red leaves while those on sumacs and the pears are red.               
     Attractive berries or small fruits on this thicket vegetation are food for a variety of birds and rodents through fall and winter.  And the plants they grow on provide shelter for many of those same species of creatures during that harshest of seasons.  Those creatures are hard to spot in the thickets. American robins, eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings, northern mockingbirds, ruffed grouse, starlings and other berry-eating, bird species ingest those fruits, digest the pulp, but pass many of the seeds in their droppings, often far from the parent plants, thus spreading those plants across the landscape. 
     This autumn, or succeeding ones, look for colorful berries in thickets, and the critters that eat them.  Those plants and animals make fall the more interesting.