Jack-in-the-pulpits show club-shaped bunches of
scarlet berries here and there among the grasses. On the wooded slopes
there are the white fruits of the baneberry on its quaintly-shaped red
stalks, the pretty fruit clusters of the moonseed and the smilax. The
scattered berries of the green-brier will be black in winter, but
their September hue is a bronze green of a delicate shade which
artists might envy. It will take another month to ripen the drupes of
the black-haw into their blue-black beauty; now they are green on one
side and red on the other, like a ripening apple. It's a fine
education to know just which fruits you may nibble and which you must
not eat. Red-stalked clusters of black berries hang from the vines of
the Virginia creeper among leaves just touched with the hectic flame
that tells of their passing, all too soon. At the sign of the sumac,
tall torches of garnet berries rise. Down the bank, the bittersweet
sends trailing arms jeweled with orange-colored pods just opening to
display the scarlet arils within. Crimsoning capsules give the
burning bush its name; this may well have been the bush at which Moses
was directed to take off his sandals because he was treading on holy
ground. Large, triangular membranaceous pods hang thickly from the
white-lined branches of the bladdernut.
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