Local Wetland Shrubs in Fall and Winter

     Certain native, wild shrubs are attractive in autumn and winter in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, each kind in its own way.  They are spicebushes, speckled alders, red-osier dogwoods and winterberries.
     Spicebushes are abundant in the understories of many local bottomland woods with constantly moist soil.  Their berries turn red in September and are a favorite food of flocks of American robins, cedar waxwings and other kinds of berry-eating birds that roam through the woods in fall. 
     Spicebush leaves turn yellow in October, brightening the bottomland woods they thrive in.  One can notice how common spicebushes are when their golden leaves stand out in woodland understories.
     The bark, twigs, leaves and berries of spicebushes have a lemony, spicy scent through the year.  One has only to scrape the bark or a twig with a thumb nail or crush a leaf or berry to experience their delightful scent.
     Speckled alders grow wild along streams, where they often grow dense, sheltering thickets of themselves.  This kind of shrub has light-colored, horizontal lenticels on its bark that give it its name.  And in winter they bear deep-purple, inch-and-a-half-long catkins (male flowers) and last year's seed cones.  Those catkins, and woody seed cones, hang abundantly and decoratively from the tips of twigs through winter.  The open-scaled alder cones somewhat resemble the cones of coniferous trees, such as pines and spruces.
     A variety of animals get shelter and food from speckled alders.  Small birds seek insect food among their twigs and leaves, and nest on their limbs.  American woodcocks, which are a kind of inland sandpiper, pull worms from the soil under their sheltering branches.  Mammals, including beavers, cottontail rabbits and field voles, eat the bark of these shrubs in winter.
     Red-osier dogwoods have red twigs that brighten wetlands, pond edges and the banks of the streams they inhabit through winter.  This striking shrub is planted on some lawns because of its decorative twigs in winter, that offer contrast to the gray, green and white of winter.
     Red-osier dogwood twigs are more green in summer.  But in autumn and winter when the green chlorophyll fades, the beautiful red is quite visible.
     Winterberries are a species of deciduous holly that loses its leaves in fall.  This uncommon shrub is native to bottomland woods with regularly wet soil.  It has red berries in autumn through winter that make it decorative in woods, and on the lawns where it is planted.  Its attractive, red berries through winter are edible to birds, particularly northern mockingbirds, and flocks of robins and waxwings.  Some people use those berries for indoor décor.         
     Look for these attractive shrubs in fall and winter.  They are well worth seeing.