Nature’s leftovers: How colorful fruits, seeds sustain wildlife as winter progresses

This time of year, there are some shrubs that exhibit colorful fruits and seeds.

These would include sumacs, wahoos (yes, wahoos), and highbush cranberry. As the photos indicate, these fruits are not exactly camouflaged. This raises the question, how come hungry birds and mammals haven’t gobbled down such obvious lunchables?

Imagine you are stuck at home and all the food you have is in the refrigerator. In the fridge, you see some watermelon, cheese, ice cream and, in the back of a drawer, some spinach. What are you going to eat first? What will you leave until everything else is gone and you’re really hungry?

So, the plants are like the spinach in the back of the veggie drawer. They’re not wildlife’s first choice, but these fruits are important resources as winter progresses and food choices diminish.

Sumac in winter

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is one of two sumacs common in our area. Staghorn is the taller of the two and is sometimes considered a small tree as it can reach a height of 40 feet. The plant’s stout twigs are so thickly coated with hair that they were thought to resemble a buck’s new antlers, or a stag’s horns “in velvet.” In fact, this woody plant’s species name, typhina, is Latin for hair-covered.

Speaking of which, the other, shorter sumac in our area is called smooth sumac (Rhus glabra).

As you can guess, this species has hairless, glossy twigs. Smooth sumac grows in more Illinois counties than staghorn sumac. Here at Stillman Nature Center, staghorn sumac is much more common.

Both staghorn and smooth sumacs grow dense clusters of mildly sticky, fuzzy red fruits at the ends of their branches. They have a tart, some might say acidic, smell and flavor. I know; I’ve tried them.

Keep in mind that sumac is a dioecious species. This means that each stand of sumac will be either male or female. You will only find red clusters of berries on female sumacs.

Native Americans bruised and then soaked these berries in water to create a type of pink lemonade. In California, not surprisingly, a species of sumac is known as lemonade sumac.

While we look at the sour sumac fruit and see lemonade, birds look at sumac seeds and just see lemons. That is, the berries may be nourishing, but they aren’t the birds’ first choice.

Lucky for these choosy birds, sumac fruit persists into the winter months. As summer turns to autumn, and other juicy fruits get eaten or shrivel up, sumac berries remain. Over 95 species of birds, everything from chickadees to turkeys, have been observed eating sumac fruit. Its winter persistence is one of the reasons sumac receives a good rating as a wildlife food.

American highbush cranberry

This next plant probably wouldn’t receive such a high rating, but wildlife beggars can’t be choosers. Enter American highbush cranberry (Viburnum opulus L. var. americanum) which is far from being an actual cranberry. Birds that eat this fruit include the northern cardinal, eastern bluebird, northern flicker and robin.

Besides a misleading common name, this plant’s scientific name needs some explaining.

Back in the day, I learned it as Viburnum trilobum. This was an appropriate name since the leaves, as the name suggested, have three lobes. Since I first became aware of highbush cranberry, the botanists have gotten busy.

I’ll do my best to explain. V. opulus was the name for Eurasian highbush cranberry that was planted as an ornamental in this country. It later escaped and was found along roadsides and in woods. Some botanists concluded that the two highbush cranberries only differed at the varietal level and so “var americanum” was added after the European species name.

Now, I just want to sample some wine varietals! Jokes aside, let’s get back to food for birds. The next plants have one of my all-time favorite names.

Yahoo for wahoos

Two species of wahoo, aka Euonymus shrubs, can both be found at Stillman. Other names for these woody plants include American wahoo, burning bush, Eastern wahoo, and spindle tree. One species is indigenous and the other is not. We have both growing here at Stillman. From here on in, we’ll call the native species eastern wahoo (Euonymus atropurpureus) and the non-native winged wahoo (Euonymous alatus). As the name suggests, winged wahoo has ridges or “wings” on its stems while eastern wahoo has a smooth green stems.

Some nativists would want me to demonize the non-native species. Since winged wahoo has been on this continent for more than 140 years, I consider it a naturalized species. When birds are looking for something to get them through the winter months, the fruit from either plant meets their needs.

And what charming pink seed capsules these shrubs have. They look all the world like tiny pink pumpkins. Like pumpkins, they have seeds, brown in this case, inside. Of particular note is the plants’ scarlet seed covers.

As winter settles in, hungry birds avail themselves of this colorful wahoo “spinach.” To be precise, some of the birds that eat wahoo fruit in fall and winter include the northern flicker, eastern bluebird, northern catbird, and cardinal.

Cardinal red

The male cardinal’s red feathers bring me back to sumac. I’m writing this article in October. It is at this time that sumac leaves start to turn bright scarlet, orange, crimson, and purple. As Julia Rogers wrote, “No sunset was ever more changeful and glorious than a patch of staghorn sumac …”

• Mark Spreyer is the executive director of the Stillman Nature Center in Barrington. Email stillmangho@gmail.com.