To the neat gardener mulberry might be a nuisance with its messy berries dropping on the ground and purple mulberry splashings on the bird bath, but it is a joy to birds. At least fifty-two varieties of birds delight in the fruit of the mulberry, which lasts from June until September.
June is a happy month for birds as well as humans, the month of long sunny days and fragrant nights when the honeysuckle perfumes the night breeze and the song sparrow wakes to sing a sleepy serenade to the summer moon.
And whenever honeysuckle is mentioned one usually thinks of the common Japanese honeysuckle that climbs over porches and fences. This will take the place over unless sternly kept in check. Within the dense growth catbirds or chipping sparrows locate their nests, and in winter the visiting white-throated sparrows make their headquarters in the shelter of the nearly evergreen foliage.
The viburnums, with their flat clusters of flowers which later develop into berries in the fall, attract the birds. Arrow-wood has dark blue fruit, and sheep-berry, also called nanny-berry, has showy flower clusters nearly 5 inches across followed by blue berries that are both sweet and edible.
Handsomest of the viburnums is the cranberry-bush, sometimes referred to as high-bush cranberry. The large clusters of bright red berries among freshly green leaves are a fine sight in autumn. According to old botanical texts the cranberries make an "agreeable jelly," but to make this jelly one will have to race with the birds, who make them disappear as fast as the dogwood berries.
The leaves of the cranberry-bush seem impervious to frost. Long after other shrubs are dried and shriveled the cranberry-bush is still a summer-like green. Sometimes you think it has forgotten about winter.
Many of our popular shrubs and perennials like hibiscus plants are native plants that have been brought under cultivation. Sometimes the process is reversed and a shrub escapes from the confines of the garden to make its way to the wilds where it leads its own life and gets on in the world without benefit of such items as pruning shears and fertilizer.
Such is the snowberry's career. From a prim orderly existence in old-fashioned gardens it wandered into the great outdoors, and there it has managed to survive among its less sheltered relatives of the honeysuckle family. The little round white berries, like tiny snowballs or camphor balls, are not eaten by birds as fast as the cranberry or dogwood berries; eventually, however, they too go, especially after they become a little droopy and brown and when more desirable fruit is no longer available to the hungry birds.
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