Berries are making a magnificent show right now. Big bunches of bright red berries hang down from guelder rose – not actually a rose but a viburnum. Honeysuckles clambering over fences and bushes are strewn with red berries, and bright red hawthorn berries are out, whilst on the ground there are spikes of the brilliant red, but poisonous, berries of the cuckoo pint, or wild arum. Apart from an early crop of blackberries, there are rich pickings of sloes on the blackthorn bushes, a good three weeks early, and great for making sloe gin.
Plants in flower include one very exotic species that grows in masses, especially by riverbanks. This is Himalayan balsam, and as its name suggests, it is a native of the Himalayas, brought over here in the 1830s as an attractive garden flower with a stunning lilac hood and lip. It also has the most astonishing heady fragrance unlike any other plant, and when the seed pods are ripe they explode at the slightest touch and fling their seeds far, with a single plant producing several hundred or more seeds. But like many introduced plants, the Himalayan balsam escaped from gardens and has run rampant across the country, especially by riverbanks. What makes it particularly pernicious is its dense cover, each plant can reach over 10 feet high, and as they grow tightly packed together the plants smother almost all other plant life. And its rich nectar attracts bumblebees, luring them away from native plants on riverbanks.
