Calendar October 2015: Wayfaring Tree

October: Wayfaring Tree

Colouring the Late Autumn

(Viburnum lantana, Order: Dipsacales, Family: Adoxaceae, Genus: Viburnum )

At the far end of our garden, I saw the red berries some years ago. They were of wayfaring tree.  I can't remember it used to be there when we moved here.  Presumably a bird brought a berry and simply dropped (you know what I mean).  

Usually they are seen commonly at the edge of meadows, in hedges where the sunlight reaches well.  The leaves are distinctively creasy, undersides with dense white silky hairs.  In the autumn they turn red or red brown, firstly surface where the chilly air touches directly. The colourful berries are beautiful, but we'd better leave them for birds and animals as they are not entirely edible.

The creamy white flowers, which are tiny and make a flowerhead, bloom in the mid summer. The berries turn at first red, then purple and eventually into dark purple (almost black).

Nearby our house there is a big grassland.  There grow grasses, meadow flowers and shrubs like wayfaring.  You cannot imagine it used to be a quarry, then be a land fill site.   I can spot quite a few former landfill sites, which were transformed into parks with wild plants. 

Wayfaring tree is one of the wild plants, which thrives well in the site.  The berry clusters of  red, purple and black are striking at the boarder of the grassland in the autumn, where leaves of grasses and bushes turn yellow and brown.

Having wondered where the name, wayfaring tree, came from, I have searched the reason but without result.  Wayfaring is 'traveling on foot', while seafaring is 'traveling by sea'.  Is there any connection between the meaning and the plant?

Maybe wayfarers, travellers in the olden days, used the berries (or leaves) for food or remedy.  I have tried to find out, but couldn't find.  (If I find something about the origin of the name, I'll update this blog.)

In October, the temperature drops sometimes under 10 C°.  The leaves turn yellow, brown and red, and fallen on the ground.  Ripen berries are eaten by birds and small mammal animals to prepare for the winter.  Walking in the morning, I feel the air holding more moisture, which makes chilly, but refreshing.  We still enjoy the warm sunshine in October, and yet prepare for the coming wet cold months....