emories of the wine that grandmother used to make. Flocks of
robins are feeding greedily on the abundant wild cherries. Thickets of
panicled dogwood are feeding stations for other migrants; already the
crimson fruit-stalks have been stripped of half their white berries.
These native fruits are so many and so varied, they make the walk a
constant delight. Each plant is a revelation. Who ever saw for the
first time the huge clusters of fruit hanging from the wild spikenard
on the face of the cliff and did not thrill with the charm of a great
discovery? Each cluster of ruby, winey berries is as large as a
hickory-nut and the clusters are aggregated upon stalks so as to
resemble huge bunches of grapes. For contrast there are the little
bunches of whitish berries on the low-growing false spikenard; they
are speckled with reddish and gray dots as if they might be cowbird's
eggs in miniature. 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. Cup-like leaves of the
honeysuckle hold bunches of scarlet berries. So on and on the creek
leads to new beauties of color and form, new delights for taste and
smell. Every plant has some excuse for its being, something of the
loveliness and fragran