Berry, berry nice!

Beautyberry (Calicarpa) is a startling lavender. — foxtail_1/Creative Commons

Most people associate autumn with fall foliage, bright orange pumpkins and shiny red apples. Toss in the russet mums, blue asters and sunny goldenrod. But don’t forget the berries, yet another bonus of year-end color.

Some fall berry displays can rival the peak of flowering in other seasons. A pyracantha or firethorn covered in deep-orange berries, a rugosa rose hung with scarlet hips, or a viburnum lush with translucent red fruits offers a gratifying display long after the last weary annual has faded away.

These berries are showy enough to be conspicuous at a distance. Others require a more intimate inspection — glossy red berries in the turning foliage of dogwood, for instance, or the jewel-like berries of cotoneaster revealed once the green leaves fall away.

We’re not the only ones who appreciate the autumn berry crop. Birds and other wildlife welcome nutritious berries whether they are preparing for hibernation or arriving in our neighborhoods after a long migratory flight.

The quintessential landscape berry is probably that of the holly. Although the traditional color scheme is glossy evergreen foliage with bright red berries, the choices are far broader than you might think.

The American holly, Ilex opaca, comes in cultivars like ‘Goldie,’ ‘Morgan Gold’ and ‘Canary’ with yellow berries. Ilex glabra, the inkberry, produces glossy black fruit, and Ilex pedunculosum, the longstalk holly, bears shiny red fruits that look like tiny long-stem cherries.

Perhaps the most spectacular of the hollies is winterberry, which drops its deciduous leaves to reveal a prodigious display of shiny red berries. This is a carefree shrub ideal for damp, heavy soils and part shade — conditions where other hollies will not thrive.

Like other dioecious or single-sexed plants, hollies have one hard-and-fast cultural caveat: Only the female plants bear berries, and they must have a male partner nearby to produce their fruit. Junipers also need a mate, as do yews, bayberry and sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhammoides), a large, thorny silver-leafed shrub that produces a bumper crop of orange berries.

Sea buckthorn and bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) are two plants ideally suited for seaside gardens in poor, sandy soil. The latter bears waxy, grayish-white berries used in making scented candles. These suckering plants can grow to 10 feet or more and work well as a dense and effective windbreak.

Pyracantha is a prickly character with formidable thorns, but an adaptable species in the landscape with cultivars that grow upright or climb a wall. There’s color variety in the berries, too. The commonest types have orange berries, but ‘Mohave’ bears red ones and ‘Soleil d’Or’ bright yellow. ‘Rutgers’ is a homegrown choice with abundant orange-red berries 3 foot plant.

Viburnums are another broad shrub group offering berries galore. Among the choicest is the American highbush cranberry, Viburnum trilobum. The handsome maple-like leaves are bronze when young, turning red and yellow in fall; the berries, carried in large clusters, are a lovely, translucent red.

You won’t find a more unusual color in fall berries than the vivid lavender of the American beautyberry, Calicarpa americana. This deciduous shrub produces clusters of lavender berries. They aren’t a big favorite among the birds, so chances are they will stick around until late winter.

We grow most roses for their flowers, but the pest- and disease-resistant rugosa clan is especially well known for its bright red hips. One of this plant’s common names is “sea tomato,” a hint that it has unusually large hips and doesn’t mind sandy, seaside conditions.

While shrubs are the berry stars, don’t forget the trees. Our native dogwood, Cornus florida, has small clusters of red berries and the Chinese species, Cornus kousa, bears fancier fruits that look something like strawberries on a long stalk.

Crabapples technically bear fruit, not berries, and are sometimes avoided because they can be disease-prone and messy. If you choose a robust cultivar with small fruit (less than one-half inch) the birds will clean up for you. “Donald Wyman’ with golden fruit, “Red Jewel’ and the weeping “Red Jade’ are three recommended varieties.

Other bird snacks that grow on wild vines may not be particularly conspicuous. Virginia creeper, when mature, produces black berries for the birds, as do the native honeysuckles Lonicera sempervirens and Lonicera flava. The latter two are well-behaved, unlike the rampant Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica.

One berry you don’t want spread around is the white fruit of the poison ivy vine. Some 55 birds consider this berry a real taste treat, which accounts for the prolific spread of poison ivy through our woodlands and coastal dunes. Try to eliminate any vines on your property while they’re small so the plants don’t reach fruiting size.

Firethorn (pyracantha) can be grown against a wall. — jalexartis/CC

Bird friendly

Some popular trees and shrubs and the birds their berries attract.

• Dogwood — cardinal, cedar waxwing, kingbird, purple finch, robin, towhee, vireo and woodpecker

• Holly — bobwhite, grouse, wild turkey, quail, robin, catbird, dove, flicker, mockingbird, cedar waxwing, sparrow, thrasher and thrush

• Juniper — cardinal, flicker, catbird, grosbeak, jay, mockingbird, robin, tree swallow, cedar waxwing

• Pyracantha — robin, blue jay, cedar waxwing, cardinal, purple finch and thrush

• Rugosa rose — brown thrasher, catbird, cedar waxwing, evening grosbeak, goldfinch, junco, song sparrow

• Viburnum — cardinal, grosbeak, cedar waxwing, finch, flicker, robin, wild turkey, woodpecker and thrush

• Virginia creeper — chickadee, finch, nuthatch, robin, mockingbird, tree swallow, titmouse and woodpecker