Last week, my wife and I were walking through the eastern Iowa woods
and noticed a few small trees with lustrous red berries. They were
beginning to wither, and most of the other deciduous trees had dropped
their leaves. This got me to thinking:

What function do the poisonous berries serve? I would assume there's
some animal that can digest them and disseminate the seed, but then
why were the berries withering on the vine? Is this a sign of a
missing bird species (e.g., a bird species fallen prey to the West
Nile virus)? Against that idea, I seem to recall often seeing such
bushes full of untouched fruit. What gives?

Thanks in advance,
A nonbotanist dilettante

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

Iris Cohen schreef
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,

+ + +
Callicarpa does not have berries, but drupes.
I am wondering if the blue color is somehow connected with this.
Prunes also tend to be blue and also are drupes.
Just idly wondering.
PvR

Our Callicarpa berries are anything but blue. They're a particularly
vivid shade of screaming pinkish-purple, a color not found elsewhere
in nature, I think, except in orchids and some tropical fish.

Monique

P van Rijckevorsel wrote:

Callicarpa does not have berries, but drupes.
I am wondering if the blue color is somehow connected with this.
Prunes also tend to be blue and also are drupes.
Just idly wondering.
PvR

The black to purple berries of deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna)
are poisonous to people but European rabbits eat them safely. The
rabbits have an enzyme, atropinesterase, that inactivates the
nightshade toxin called atropine.

Some fruit hang on for awhile until animals get desperate enough to
eat them, or maybe because the fruit have to "age" or migrating birds
arrive later to eat them. Your observation that the fruit are
withering and would presumably drop might give mice and other small
animals a chance to eat them.

There is a hypothesis that there are many plants whose preferred seed
dispersers went extinct relatively recently. The so-called megabeasts,
such as mastodons, giant ground sloths, and ancestors of camels and
hippos, were all killed off in America about 13,000 years ago. Some
ecologists believe many trees coevolved with megabeasts and therefore
have fruit or thorns that are anachronistic. Examples include the
large orange-like fruit of Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) and the
honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos) with large thorns on its trunk and
large pods with seeds that have very hard seed coats. Supposedly,
mastodons may have eaten such fruit. The thorns would have protected
the bark.

More recently in North America, Carolina parakeet and the massive
flocks of passenger pigeons became extinct. They both probably left a
void in seed dispersal of native plants. Then again, people have also
greatly reduced the number of native plants.

References

Why are some fruits poisonous?:
http://www.cnf.ca/naturecanada/autumn00/nc_f00_qa5.html

Barlow, Connie. 2001. Ghost Stories from the Ice Age. Natural History
110(9):62-67 (Sept.)

"The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and
Other Ecological Anachronisms" by Connie Barlow:
http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com...uthorInterview

Maclura pomifera (osage orange) dispersal:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...ing.google.com



(DSmith) wrote in message . com...
Last week, my wife and I were walking through the eastern Iowa woods
and noticed a few small trees with lustrous red berries. They were
beginning to wither, and most of the other deciduous trees had dropped
their leaves. This got me to thinking:

What function do the poisonous berries serve? I would assume there's
some animal that can digest them and disseminate the seed, but then
why were the berries withering on the vine? Is this a sign of a
missing bird species (e.g., a bird species fallen prey to the West
Nile virus)? Against that idea, I seem to recall often seeing such
bushes full of untouched fruit. What gives?

Thanks in advance,
A nonbotanist dilettante

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

In article ,
(David Hershey) wrote:
[snip]
More recently in North America, Carolina parakeet and the massive
flocks of passenger pigeons became extinct. They both probably left a
void in seed dispersal of native plants. Then again, people have also
greatly reduced the number of native plants.

Then again again, people have also taken on a role as dispersers of
seeds -- hence the spread of "weeds" around the world. ;-)


Cheers, Phred.

--
LID

The pulp around the hard seeds in Gleditsia fruits is sweet. Humans
can eat it, and many small mammals enjoy it. We have quite a few
honey locusts around here, and it's unusual to find fallen fruits that
have been on the ground very long. I think the critters tear them
open to get at the pulp. (In fact, when we are leading field trips,
if the Monday section finds a fruit, we pick it up and pin it to the
tree by its own thorns, so the Tuesday through Thursday sections can
see it too!)

M. Reed
College Station, Texas

David Hershey wrote:

ecologists believe many trees coevolved with megabeasts and therefore
have fruit or thorns that are anachronistic. Examples include the
large orange-like fruit of Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) and the
honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos) with large thorns on its trunk and
large pods with seeds that have very hard seed coats. Supposedly,
mastodons may have eaten such fruit. The thorns would have protected
the bark.

Compared to what passes for blue in animal husbandry the blue in Callicarpa
is a pretty clear blue :-)

A quick try for "drupe" and "blue" in a search engine turned up quite a few
hits, each in a separate family. On the other hand "blue" and "berry" was a
non-starter.
PvR

Monique Reed schreef
Our Callicarpa berries are anything but blue. They're a particularly
vivid shade of screaming pinkish-purple, a color not found elsewhere
in nature, I think, except in orchids and some tropical fish.

Monique

P van Rijckevorsel wrote:

Callicarpa does not have berries, but drupes.
I am wondering if the blue color is somehow connected with this.
Prunes also tend to be blue and also are drupes.
Just idly wondering.
PvR

Farkleberries (Vaccinium arboreum) don't count as blue? If Callicarpa
counts, those should.

Monique

P van Rijckevorsel wrote:

Compared to what passes for blue in animal husbandry the blue in Callicarpa
is a pretty clear blue :-)

A quick try for "drupe" and "blue" in a search engine turned up quite a few
hits, each in a separate family. On the other hand "blue" and "berry" was a
non-starter.

I am not claiming anything, just noting that I see something that looks like
a pattern and trying to test if it has substance ...

FWIW all websites treating farkleberry seem to describe the berries as
black, eg
http://www.floridata.com/ref/V/vacc_arb.cfm
PvR

=============
Monique Reed schreef
Farkleberries (Vaccinium arboreum) don't count as blue? If Callicarpa
counts, those should.
Monique

=============
P van Rijckevorsel wrote:
Compared to what passes for blue in animal husbandry the blue in
Callicarpa is a pretty clear blue :-)

A quick try for "drupe" and "blue" in a search engine turned up quite a
few hits, each in a separate family. On the other hand "blue" and "berry"
was a non-starter.

In the Washington D.C. area I often see honey locust pods on the
ground for a long time and have gathered supermarket bags full of
pods. Perhaps you have more wildlife or trees with sweeter pods. At
one time they held a contest to find trees with pods of the highest
sugar content.

I didn't mean to imply that honey locust was dispersed only by
mastodons. Fruits or seeds of a particular species are often eaten by
a wide variety of animals.

David R. Hershey


Monique Reed wrote in message ...
The pulp around the hard seeds in Gleditsia fruits is sweet. Humans
can eat it, and many small mammals enjoy it. We have quite a few
honey locusts around here, and it's unusual to find fallen fruits that
have been on the ground very long. I think the critters tear them
open to get at the pulp. (In fact, when we are leading field trips,
if the Monday section finds a fruit, we pick it up and pin it to the
tree by its own thorns, so the Tuesday through Thursday sections can
see it too!)

M. Reed
College Station, Texas

David Hershey wrote:

ecologists believe many trees coevolved with megabeasts and therefore
have fruit or thorns that are anachronistic. Examples include the
large orange-like fruit of Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) and the
honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos) with large thorns on its trunk and
large pods with seeds that have very hard seed coats. Supposedly,
mastodons may have eaten such fruit. The thorns would have protected
the bark.

Donald Wyman's book, "Shrubs and Vines for American Gardens" has a
list of blue-fruited vines and shrubs and lists 14 genera, 13 if you
include Mahonia in Berberis. He has Callicarpa on his purple list.

Of his 14 genera with blue fruited species, ten have drupes, three
have berries (Berberis, Mahonia and Vaccinium) and one a capsule
(Gaultheria).

David R. Hershey





"P van Rijckevorsel" wrote in message ...
I am not claiming anything, just noting that I see something that looks like
a pattern and trying to test if it has substance ...

FWIW all websites treating farkleberry seem to describe the berries as
black, eg
http://www.floridata.com/ref/V/vacc_arb.cfm
PvR

=============
Monique Reed schreef
Farkleberries (Vaccinium arboreum) don't count as blue? If Callicarpa
counts, those should.
Monique

=============
P van Rijckevorsel wrote:
Compared to what passes for blue in animal husbandry the blue in
Callicarpa is a pretty clear blue :-)

A quick try for "drupe" and "blue" in a search engine turned up quite a
few hits, each in a separate family. On the other hand "blue" and "berry"
was a non-starter.

Thank you.

My hypothesis, such as it is, is that when it comes to seed-dispersal fruits
may be specialists or generalists. Berries are easy: any animal may take a
bite (and this will include some seeds). Berries are generalists. On the
other hand drupes must be eaten whole if the seed is to be swallowed and
require an animal of a certain minimum size (related to the size of the
drupe). As such they are more specialized than berries.

The hypothesis further supposes that as a color for signalling ripeness the
typical color of berries (green-red-black) are general signals to all
comers, especially red.

Drupes being more specialistic would tend to use other colors (blue, purple)
to put out a more directional signal, ie limited to their special partners.

As with all such things this may not apply in a single form across all
continents and climates, but first appearences hint that there may be
something in it?
PvR

==============
David Hershey schreef
Donald Wyman's book, "Shrubs and Vines for American Gardens" has a list of
blue-fruited vines and shrubs and lists 14 genera, 13 if you
include Mahonia in Berberis. He has Callicarpa on his purple list.

Of his 14 genera with blue fruited species, ten have drupes, three
have berries (Berberis, Mahonia and Vaccinium) and one a capsule
(Gaultheria).

David R. Hershey


"P van Rijckevorsel" wrote
I am not claiming anything, just noting that I see something that looks
like a pattern and trying to test if it has substance ...

FWIW all websites treating farkleberry seem to describe the berries as
black, eg http://www.floridata.com/ref/V/vacc_arb.cfm
PvR

..