FROM holly in the field hedge to guelder rose at woodland’s edge, from rowan on the moor to buckthorn beside the shore, the land is bursting with autumn fruitfulness. By all anecdotes and estimations, it is a bumper year for berries, a ‘soft mast’ year, when the berry-bearing trees and bushes produce a glut, when the hawthorn cascades red with haws and the bramble is clotted with blackberries. The sloes are as big as grapes.
The wild berries of Britain rarely fail, but, every so often, there comes a bonanza crop. The reasons for such a berry rush are opaque (Nature likes to keep some secrets close to her chest), although weather and Darwinian continuation of the species have a role. A summer such as the last, both sunny and wet, enables berries to ripen and swell; the sheer number of fruits increases the odds of their seeds being distributed via the faeces of the gorging birds and beasts. Yet the making of abundance takes a toll on tree, bush and shrub, so years of über-bounty are occasional, not habitual.
Producing a plentitude, however, is insufficient for survival. A species of berry must stand out from alternatives if it is to attract a passing redwing or a mooching wood mouse. Consequently, each fruit has its architecture of temptation, its own design of enticement. The berries, ‘haws’, of hawthorn are the seductive scarlet of a 1950s starlet’s lipstick; the sophisticated, elongated hips of the wild rose are proffered like precious jewels in a Bond Street window. The sunlight glints on the blackberry as if it were a ballroom glitter ball. Bryony hangs as an unclasped necklace of green and red. And is there any fruit more sophisticated than the pink, four-lobed spindle berry?
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
