Blog Memories: Seeds, Berries, and Cones
While we're all busy getting ready for Thanksgiving, here's another encore blog you'll enjoy - it was first published in October of 2021.
Here in the Northeast, autumn is a wonderful time to enjoy the changing foliage, but it's also a good opportunity to appreciate the many seeds, berries, and cones that grow on the trees and shrubs.
Many birds and small animals rely on the fall harvest of berries and seeds. They provide calories and crucial nutrients that help them thrive during the colder months when other natural food sources are nonexistent or buried in the snow. They also add beauty to the landscape when most flowers are already gone. Here is a sampling of some of the many seed pods, berries, and cones that are around my Bedford, New York farm.
Enjoy these photos.
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- Have you ever heard about the beautyberry, Callicarpa? Tiny spring flowers produce clusters of these magenta colored bird berries that remain on these spreading shrubs after the leaves drop.
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- These shrubs are outside my guest guest house and show off beautiful color this time of year. The fruits become a good food source for many different birds, including mockingbirds, robins, and brown thrashers.
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- If you follow this blog regularly, you may recall learning about the bur oak, Quercus macrocarpa. We planted two rows along the outsides of the boxwood allee, one on the left and one on the right. The leaves of the bur oak are easy to identify. They are alternate, simple, six to 12 inches long, roughly obovate in shape, with many lobes. When mature, the two middle sinuses nearly reach the midrib dividing the leaf nearly in half.
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- This is the acorn of the bur oak. The bur oak acorn is very large – macrocarpa is Latin for “big fruit”. The cap of the acorn is called the involuchre and nearly covers the entire nut and is very hairy. As the acorns mature, the cap and seed will turn brownish tan.
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- This is called a Chinese Scholar tree. The Scholar tree is a deciduous, round-headed tree growing up to 50 feet or taller with a somewhat open look while young.
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- It has compound leaves with seven to 17 two-inch-long leaflets.
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- The pods of Scholar trees appear in the fall and look similar to dangling beads.
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- This tree is an Atlas cedar. I have several planted down behind my chicken coops not far from a stand of tall white pines. Cedrus atlantica, the Atlas cedar, is a distinctive evergreen. Its silvery blue to bluish-green needles are eye-catching in any landscape.
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- All members of the genus Cedrus produce upright, barrel-shaped cones. These are male cones, which are smaller than the female cones and don’t stay on the tree for very long.
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- Cornus kousa is a small deciduous tree that can grow up to 40 feet tall. It is in the flowering plant family Cornaceae. Common names include kousa, kousa dogwood, Chinese dogwood, Korean dogwood, and Japanese dogwood. It is native to East Asia including Korea, China and Japan.
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- This is a fruit of the kousa which is edible. The soft pulp is sweet with a similar flavor to a ripe persimmon but it also has hard seeds inside.
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- These are the seeds of the magnolia tree. In the fall after the flowers are long gone, Magnolia seed pods, which resemble exotic-looking cones, spread open to reveal bright red berries. Birds, squirrels, and other wildlife love these tasty fruits. Inside the berries are the magnolia seeds.
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- I am sure many of you recognize the leaves of the ginkgo. The leaves are unusually fan-shaped, up to three inches long, with a petiole that is also up to three inches long. This shape and the elongated petiole cause the foliage to flutter in the slightest breeze.
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- Here are fallen ginkgo tree fruits. The most noticeable thing about these is their smell. Have you ever smelled one? It is hard to miss, and the stench is quite disagreeable. The outer, nasty smelling pulp is known botanically as sarcotesta. The ginkgo seeds inside contain urushiol, which is the same chemical that causes poison oak, ivy, and sumac, so always wear gloves and protect your skin whenever handling the fruit.
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- Here is one seed separated from its fruity encasement. It is a single hard-shelled seed enclosing an edible kernel. The kernels are often roasted and used in Asian cuisines.
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- Catalpa, Catalpa speciosa, is another tree I love – this one located just outside my carport. Mature catalpas can reach heights of 50 feet or more. They are very showy with their white orchid-like flowers in June, huge leaves, and cigar-shaped fruit.
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- In autumn, mature catalpa seed pods turn brown and often hang on the tree through late fall and into winter.
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- This is one of my many Stewartia trees. Stewartia is a species of flowering plant in the family Theaceae, native to Japan and Korea. All varieties are slow-growing, all-season performers that show off fresh bright green leaves in spring. Do you know why I love Stewartia trees? Well, Stewart is my last name after all. However, there is no relation. “Stewartia” is named for Scottish nobleman and botanist, John Stuart, who had imported the plant to his personal London garden. He later served as British prime minister from 1762 to 1763.
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- Stewartias feature stunning bark that exfoliates in strips of gray, orange, and reddish brown once the trunk attains a diameter of two to three inches.
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- Stewartias produce woody ovoid capsules of seeds each of which has five seed chambers containing up to four seeds.
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- And here is a rose bush laden with hips. The rose hip or rosehip, is also called the rose haw and rose hep.
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- Rose hips are the seed pods of roses. They look like small crab apples and are typically red to orange, but ranges from dark purple to black in some species. Rose hips remain on the plant long after rose blooms fade. I hope these photos help you appreciate the seeds, berries, and cones of the trees and shrubs in your own backyards. They are all beautiful in their own right and important food sources for our woodland friends.
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