The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens website below says woodpeckers and
Northern cardinal eat the fruit of Callicarpa americana. The USDA
Forest Service says "At least 10 species of birds feed on the fruit,
especially northern bobwhite. The fruit is also eaten by raccoon,
opossum, and gray fox."

References:

Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, The Interlaced Biology of Birds and Plants:
http://www.bbg.org/gar2/topics/wildl...s/birds/2.html

USDA Forest Service on Callicarpa americana:
http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/p...alame/all.html

David R. Hershey


(Iris Cohen) wrote in message ...
Last week, my wife and I were walking through the eastern Iowa woods and
noticed a few small trees with lustrous red berries.
What function do the poisonous berries serve?

What makes you think they are poisonous? Maybe they are Viburnum, which the
birds will eat later in the winter. I am still trying to figure out the purpose
of Callicarpa berries, which were apparently one of those random mutations that
people love to puzzle over.

Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much
that ain't so."
Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw), 1818-1885