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Thumbs, Feathers,
and
Early Summer Fruit
Serviceberry Fruit |
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A robin perched on a lower limb
of a nearby tree, this past week, and scolded me for
eating so many of the plump, purple serviceberries,
while I stood, bear-like, in the middle of the large
shrub-like serviceberry tree, pawing clusters of the
small, round fruits from their inch-long stems,
popping each tasty handful into my mouth. She had
swooped to her observation point from higher in the
tree, where she too had been eating the tasty fruit,
but only clumsily, and one at a time. Suddenly I
noticed that the robin had abandoned her scolding
and was now carefully studying my serviceberry
consumption technique that was so obviously
superior, even to a creature with a bird-sized
brain, to her own “one-at-a-time-with-the-beak”
approach.
She cocked her head to one
side, likely to get a better view of the technique
that this gluttonous two-legged interloper was using
to strip her seasonal pantry of its prized fruit. I
could sense her marvel at the clear superiority of
the creature’s hand, complete with fingers and
opposable thumb, for the task of plucking fruit.
Her stare moved briefly from my hand to the tip of
her wing—as though she were thinking, why can’t I do
that with these things. She stretched out one wing
to get a better look at the very tip, as if to check
out if maybe there was an opposable digit there that
she had not yet discovered.
After several seconds she
seemed to resignedly conclude that there was only
those run-of-the-mill feathers, and she flitted back
up to another high branch of the serviceberry tree,
there to further ponder the inequities and
injustices of biology—even as she resumed her own
meal. |
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I spent many an hour gently
picking mulberries. The ripest, sweetest ones fall
to the ground with just the slightest disturbance of
their branch. Pluck them too firmly between your
thumb and forefinger, and they crush—into mush and a
large stain of indelible purple ink. I mastered the
art of detecting the truly ripe mulberries from the
just barely purple—the truly ripe fruit take on an
almost black color with a distinctly moist sheen.
Like all tree ripened fruit, they have a limb-life
of about 24 hours before a squirrel, bird, summer
breeze, or hungry child comes along to dislodge the
now barely attached berry from its place on the
limb.
Cherries ripened only a little
later. Their sour disposition made them unpalatable
to all but the hungriest of farm boys—which is why I
often complained of stomach aches as a child.
It has been only in recent
years that I discovered the more refined fruit of
the serviceberry. Slightly smaller than a cherry or
mulberry, but with a flavor somewhere between a
strawberry and an apple. The fruit becomes edible
as the berries turn red, but when they are fully
ripened, they take on a purple color and are
memorably sweet. I have never picked even a small
bowlful to take into the house, but I rarely pass up
a serviceberry tree in June without stopping for a
snack. Robins and humans agree that the
serviceberry is the best of the fruiting plants for
attracting wildlife to your landscape.
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April 27, 2006
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May 04, 2006
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Perennials
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May 25, 2006
Hummingbird Garden
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June 8, 2006
Wildflower Week
June 15th
Shade Garden Coming Soon
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As I watched her begin
again to grasp each individual berry in her beak and
then clumsily jerk it from its stem with an awkward
wrench of her head and neck, I noticed a number of
large clusters of the perfectly ripened berries near
her in the upper reaches of the tree, well beyond
the reach of my outstretched arm.
Late June is the early fruit
season in Wyobraska, with serviceberries,
mulberries, cherries, and chokecherries all ripening
in rapid succession. Most of these fruit are what I
like to think of as tree-to-mouth fruit. They have
a short to non-existent shelf life, the individual
fruit tend to be small in size, and it’s often a
race with the birds to get the fruit harvested, or
should I say eaten. That robin’s careful
observation of a major competitor is in reality part
of an ongoing, interspecies, (pardon the expression)
arms race to see who can eat more of nature’s early
summer abundance.
What the robin didn’t know is
that I had honed my fruit plucking skills in the
mulberry and cherry trees of the eastern Nebraska
farm on which I was raised. One could get a
scolding from my mother for sneaking into the
refrigerator for a between meal snack, but anything
edible in the groves and fencerows of the farm was
fair game.
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The robin had become suddenly
quiet, except for the occasional chirp of
contentment—I’m sure--at the taste of a particularly
sweet berry. I’m relatively certain that I
understand that robin word, because it sounds
remarkably similar the sound I make when my taste
buds come across one of those particularly sweet
berries.
The lower branches of the tree
were now nearly devoid of fruit. I glanced up again
at the robin surrounded by all of those clusters of
berries high in the tree. Another robin flew in to
a branch near the first, and as she did, I found
myself gazing longingly at the easy manner of her
flight and the proficiency of her winged agility in
moving from branch to branch, or more to the point,
from berry cluster to berry cluster. I lowered my
eyes to the fruitless branches within my reach and
looked up again, enviously, at the robins feasting
in the upper branches of the tree.
Slowly my gaze fell on my
arms-- my smooth, unfeathered arms. Quietly I
studied my clearly inferior limbs in hopes that
nature was somehow merely late in according me an
equal opportunity to share in the fruit in the upper
reaches of the tree. But alas, I couldn’t find even
the least sign of an emerging feather. Only run of
the mill fingers and opposable thumbs.
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