Barberry

“ Here is another elegant shrub that does its growing in the winter, and takes the long dry summer to ripen its fruit and be beautiful in,—the Berberis aquifolium, or holly-leaved barberry, commonly known as the Oregon grape. It is looking as fresh and piquant in March as though it had all of April and May behind it. All around us, on every hand, are plants and shrubs or trees growing. ”

“ The barberry, in similar vein, lays mischievous hold of the tongue of its sipping bee, and I fancy, in his early acquaintance, before he has learned its ways, gives him more of a welcome than he had bargained for. The evening primrose, with outstretched filaments, hangs a golden necklace about the welcome murmuring noctuid, while the various orchids excel in the ingenuity of their salutations. Here is one which presents a pair of tiny clubs to the sphinx-moth at its threshold, gluing them to its bulging eyes. ”

“ BEAR-BERRIES.—A small trailing plant of great repute as a medicine, but of no use in any other respect.
106. BERBERIS vulgaris. BARBERRY.—This has long been cultivated in gardens for its fruit, which is a fine acid, and it is used as a conserve, and also for giving other sweeter fruits a flavour. The common wild kind has stones in the fruit, which renders it disagreeable to eat. There is a variety without stones called the Male Barberry, which is preferred on this account. ”

“ Like the English haw, its fruit requires two years to vegetate.
The barberry, so very abundant in our vicinity, is supposed to be an introduced shrub. It corresponds exactly with the Berberis vulgaris of Europe. It has only a limited locality on the seaboard of New England, and is riot found anywhere else on this continent. The vigor of its growth is especially note-worthy. It rises by the way-side; it grows in the chinks and crevices of the rocks; it spreads over neglected pastures, and looks around with a saucy confidence that seems to say, "All the world was made for barberry bushes." ”

“ By divesting it of its lower branches, and carefully removing all the suckers which it so liberally throws up, the barberry may be diverted from its natural bush-like growth, and made to assume a tree-like form; a change which improves not only its appearance but even its produce, since, when its strength is spent in sending up many shoots, the berries are comparatively small and few in number. Those of the ordinary barberry, of a long oval in shape, contain two or even sometimes three seeds ”

“ When a coach started out from that old tavern, it passed the burying ground and a dense growth of barberry bushes which grew along the roadside. There seems to have been, in many [Pg 341] places, a suspicion of uncanny reputation connected with barberry bushes. In one spot a dense group of bushes was said to harbor a vast snake; in another it shaded an Indian’s grave; a third concealed a ghost. The barberry was not a native of America; it is an immigrant, and has the further ill name of blasting any wheat near which it is planted. ”

“ Although with us barberry bushes are for the most part denizens of the open, in Europe they are reported as often growing at the margin of woods. When in this situation, the branches become much more elongated, and, by using the recurved spines as grappling hooks, they climb over the shrubbery encompassing Leaves and the tree trunks, and finally gain support upon the branches of the trees themselves. Unlike ordinary vines, however, which only injure the plants that support them, the barberry may be Fig. 5.—Berberis aquifolium. ”

“ The Common Barberry is a spiny shrub, growing in hedge and copse, and brightening the spot from April to June with its strings of yellow flowers, and later in the year with its oblong red berries. Its shoots attain a height of from six to eight feet, and are clothed in a whitish bark, the wood being yellow. The flowers include eight or nine sepals and six petals: the outer sepals are very small and liable to be overlooked. The petals are in two series, and at the base of each petal are two honey-secreting glands, which induce the visits of honey-loving insects. ”

“ Her eyes may have meetings with mine.
p. 143A BACKWARD SPRING The trees are afraid to put forth buds,
And there is timidity in the grass;
The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds,
And whether next week will pass
Free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush
Of barberry waiting to bloom. ”

“ Barberry Jelly.—Take some very ripe barberries, pick them from their stalks, and weigh them. To every pound of fruit take three-quarters of a pound of loaf sugar; add sufficient water to make it into a syrup, put in the barberries, and boil them until the syrup comes to the pearl, taking off any scum which may rise. Then throw them into a fine hair or lawn sieve, and press the berries with a spoon to extract as much juice as possible from them. Receive the syrup and juice in a pan, put it again on the fire, and finish as apple jelly. ”

“ There is a remarkable absence of undergrowth in the forests: few shrubs, and hardly any herbaceous plants appear. Among the former is the beautiful holly-leaved barberry, which, except the Veronica elliptica (V. decussata of our gardens) , is the only very handsome-flowered plant in this part of Fuegia. Two or three other woody plants, a second species of barberry, an Arbutus and an Escallonia (the latter allied to the saxifrages of the northern hemisphere) , almost conclude the list of shrubs. The banks and rocks that border the torrents exhibit a few Ferns and a luxuriant growth of Mosses. ”

“ In attempting to reconstruct for ourselves the main features of the original ancestral barberry we are much helped by the fact that besides Berberis vulgaris, which is the only representative of the genus in central Europe, there have been developed a multitude of species in Asia and a still larger number in the two Americas; for it is clear that this must considerably increase the chances of our being able to find something like the primitive form persisting in certain living species. ”

“ BARBERRY (Berberis vulgaris) , a shrub with spiny-toothed leaves, which on the woody shoots are reduced to forked spines, and pale yellow flowers in hanging racemes, which are succeeded by orange-red berries. It is a member of the botanical natural order Berberidaceae, and contains about 100 species in the north temperate zone and in the Andes of South America extending into Patagonia. ”

“ Finally, it is reported that in our Western States the fruit of Berberis aquifolium and certain other native species is made to yield upon fermentation an agreeable wine.
But, for all their attractiveness to us, the berries seem to be less in favor with birds than are many fruits which we care nothing for. So long as the more succulent or less acid fruits are to be obtained, birds visit the barberry but little. When winter comes, however, they are glad enough to profit by the barberry's offer of something to eat, and the bright scarlet clusters do not dangle in vain. ”

“ It might well, therefore, seem strange that a plant with so many recommendations, both as regards use and beauty, should be so seldom met with in our gardens, and in many places have been almost extirpated from even our fields; but better reason can be shown for the disfavour into which the barberry has fallen than can be adduced in every case for the neglect of native plants—a great objection to its being planted very near houses being the very offensive odour of the flowers. ”

“ Now, the long branches of the barberry arise each as a continuation of the axis of a rosette branch. While these short branches have only a cluster of leaves to support, they are but weak, brittle affairs, composed chiefly of soft pith with only a sparse supply of woody fibers; but when the short axis comes to serve as the basal part of a long shoot, not only does the wood increase remarkably, but even the pith becomes hard and firm. ”

“ The inner rind of the Barberry-tree boiled in white wine, and a quarter of a pint drank each morning, is an excellent remedy to cleanse the body of choleric humours, and free it from such diseases as choler causes, such as scabs, itch, tetters, ringworms, yellow jaundice, boils, &c. It is excellent for hot agues, burnings, scaldings, heat of the blood, heat of the liver, bloody-flux; for the berries are as good as the bark, and more pleasing: they get a man a good stomach to his victuals, by strengthening the attractive faculty which is under Mars. ”

“ Barren as this country is, it abounds with a variety of unknown plants, and gave sufficient employment to Mr Forster and his party. The tree, which produceth the winter's bark; is found here in the woods, as is the holy- leaved barberry; and some other sorts, which I know not, but I believe are common in the straits of Magalhaens. We found plenty of a berry, which we called the cranberry, because they are nearly of the same colour, size, and shape. It grows on a bushy plant, has a bitterish taste, rather insipid; but may he eaten either raw or in tarts, and is used as food by the natives. ”

“ When boiled with sugar, however, it makes an agreeable preserve, rob, or jelly, according to the different modes of preparing it. Barberries are also used as a dry sweetmeat, and in sugarplums or comfits; are pickled with vinegar, and are used for the garnishing of dishes. They are likewise well calculated to allay heat and thirst in persons afflicted with fevers. The bark of this barberry shrub is said to have been administered with effect in cases of jaundice, and in some other complaints; and the inner bark, with the assistance of alum, dyes linen a fine yellow colour. ”

“ Sepals 6, roundish, with 2–6 bractlets outside. Petals 6, obovate, concave, with two glandular spots inside above the short claw. Stamens 6. Stigma circular, depressed. Fruit a 1–few-seeded berry. Seeds erect, with a crustaceous integument.—Shrubs, with yellow wood and inner bark, yellow flowers in drooping racemes, sour berries, and 1–9-foliolate leaves. Stamens irritable. (Derived from Berbêrys, the Arabic name of the fruit.)
1. B. Canadénsis, Pursh. (American Barberry.) Leaves repandly toothed, the teeth less bristly-pointed; racemes few-flowered; petals notched at the apex; berries oval ”

“ It may be raised from the berries as easily as hawthorn, and will grow faster, if the suckers be planted early. The barberry puts up numerous suckers from the roots; it will therefore always grow close at the bottom, and make an impenetrable fence. ”

“ The barberry is a sensitive plant, endowed apparently with something analogous to the nervous system of animals; for its blossoms offer a noted specimen of vegetable irritability, easily excited by the insertion of a pin—the stamens, if lightly touched at their base, springing forward and striking against the stigma, while the petals at the same time close over them. If the anthers be ripe, this movement causes them to discharge their pollen upon the stigma, and then, if touched again, no result is elicited ”

“ To four ounces of pine apple jam, put a table spoonful of pine apple syrup, and three quarters of a pint of cream, and pass it through a sieve, with the juice of two lemons.
Barberry Ice. To half a pound of barberry jam, put three quarters of a pint of cream: pass it through a hair sieve, and colour it.
Biscuit Ice. To four yolks of eggs, allow three quarters of a pint of cream, three ounces 83of spunge biscuits, a little cinnamon, and four ounces of sugar: stir it all on the fire, till it begins to thicken, then pass it through a sieve. ”

“ Even the mere idea of an animal's tender lips or tongue tearing at these shoots from below gives one a momentary shudder. In the younger, wavy branches of the Barberry the spines are straighter or more diverging. The young leaves of the short bud above alluded to are also most efficiently protected by their spines. The Hawthorn has a curious arrangement of very long stout thorns, behind which the leaves are sheltered. The younger flexible branches have smaller spines, which become efficient in winter and tend to prevent animals from eating the bark. ”

“ When the time arrives, the leaves, instead of separating entirely, drop only the blade, while the flattened overlapping leafstalks remain attached to the stem and perform the function of bark for several years.
It will thus be seen that we have in the barberry one of those rare cases (paralleled by certain species of orange, grapevine, and creeper) in which an apparently simple leaf has the blade articulated with the stalk after the manner so characteristic of the leaflets of compound leaves (Fig. 8) . ”

“ Moreover, assimilation could not, of course, be carried on during the winter, and so Fig. 10.—Berberis buxifolia. Leaf rosette and spine. the green parts of the leaf could well be spared to afford the material necessary for making the spines firmer and longer. Thus would finally result a purely defensive organ, so much the more efficient because having no other function to perform. Our common barberry exhibits especially well (Figs. 11 and 4) not only the more highly developed spines, but the intermediate stages connecting these with the primitive spiny leaf. ”

“ It always bears on the young shoots, so that the principal art required in pruning it consists in cutting out the old wood, and shortening the young. The height at which the bearing shoots should be left is three feet, or four feet. The best raspberries are the red and yellow Antwerp. Raspberries are propagated by suckers, which are produced in great abundance every year. The raspberry belongs to the same genus as the bramble, or blackberry.
Barberries.—No fruit-tree or shrub requires less care in its culture than the barberry, or, as it is more properly called, the berberry. ”