Pretty Winter and Early Spring Shrubs

     Winter-berries, speckled alders, red-osier dogwoods and hazel-nuts are native shrubs in southeastern Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in the eastern United States, that live in constantly moist soil.  These shrub species are common in appropriate habitats, and winter-berries and red-osiers are planted on lawns.  And all of them are prettiest in winter and early in spring. 
     Winter-berry bushes are also called deciduous hollies because they are a holly that loses its leaves in autumn and grows new ones the next spring.  The main beauty of this shrub, whether wild in wooded bottomlands with damp soil, or planted on lawns, is its many decorative, red berries on female plants.  Those berries stand out vividly before gray, deciduous bark and are eventually eaten by rodents, and American robins, cedar waxwings and other kinds of berry-eating birds that add their feathered beauties to that of winter-berry bushes late in winter and into early spring.
     Speckled alders are most attractive in winter.  They are called speckled because of the obvious lenticels on their bark.  In winter they are abundantly adorned with many inch-long, dull-purple male catkins that swing in a breeze and half-inch long, woody "cones" that contained last year's seeds.  Stands of this type of alder line brooks and streams in cow pastures where they receive abundant sunlight.  White-tailed deer, cottontail rabbits, muskrats, field voles and white-footed mice browse their twigs, buds and bark in winter.
     Red-osier dogwood shrubbery has strikingly red stems that seem to glow in the sunlight in winter.  This species prefers moist soil in sunny marshes and around human-made impoundments.  In some wet places they form rows or screens of themselves that are attractive to see, particularly when mingling with willows and other wetland plants.  Red-osier dogwoods are sometimes planted in moist ground for their attractive, red twigs that add color and beauty to wet, winter landscapes.  A kind of saw-fly lays eggs on red-osier dogwood leaves in summer.  The resulting larvae eat the leaves, pupate in the ground, and emerge as flying adults that lay eggs on other red-osier dogwoods.
     The beauties of hazel-nut shrubbery are visible early in March.  Then the numerous and obvious, two-inch-long, yellow male catkins undulate gracefully in the breeze.  And, at the same time, the tiny, red tenacles of diminutive female flowers emerge from woody "pots" on the twigs.  Those lovely, red fingers, that we have to look for, receive wind-blown pollen from male hazel-nut catkins and produce the hazel nuts that are ripe and available to people and wildlife early in fall.  Black bears, white-tailed deer, gray squirrels, mice, wild turkeys and blue jays are some of the creatures that eat hazel nuts in fall and winter.
     These kinds of shrubs, and the critters that consume their berries, seeds or nuts, add beauty to the habitats they live in during winter and early spring, times when we need all the natural beauties we can get.  We only need to get out at the right time in the right places to enjoy them and be uplifted by their beauties and intrigues.