Firethorn berries are a favorite food for robins

For a while there as a kid I went through a very serious bird phase. If it had feathers, I was all over it: how birds acted, moved, ate, sang, squawked, flocked…I was a total bird geek. Especially nests.

There was just something about seeing those splendid images of birds’ nests in the encyclopedia. With eggs! Or better than that, little birds. They got me a Golden Guide to birds, and I wore it out. It’s funny how later on I sort of abandoned birds and became a botanist.

But don’t get mad at me: I still love birds, and I marvel at the commonest yard birds chomping down at the feeder or on the suet. The commoner, the better, I guess.

A few years ago I went on a field trip with one of the Southeast’s most renowned birders, John Cely, who lives here in town. We went as far as Cranberry Glades, in eastern West Virginia. This is a remarkable place, and certainly worth a visit even if you are not a dedicated birder, or botanist. 

My goal was for John to point out an assortment of warblers, so notoriously hard to identify. And what did we see? What made the day? A pair of blue jays, dealing with each other: talking, chatting, playing, squealing, preening, rising, descending…it was amazing. They had nothing else in mind but to spend the afternoon together, having fun I think.

What about robins?

Now that it’s early spring, we often see great flocks of robins here in town. This afternoon, a great assortment of them visited our front yard for dinner. These stolid birds, always sort of grim-faced, and yet rather friendly, not too inclined to flee when approached whenever a juicy earthwork seems ready to be plucked from the damp lawn. In the backyard they have been ravaging a terrifically-fruiting Carolina cherry-laurel. But in the front, it’s a different dinner item.

This is a plant that is hard to be close friends with, as it is dangerously thorny. It, and its near relatives of the same genus, are native to eastern Asia, and widely grown as ornamental shrubs.

Our Mystery Plant is firethorn, Taiwan pyracantha, Pyracantha koidzumii. It is actually becoming something of a potential pest here in South Carolina as well as Georgia and Florida…maybe elsewhere…as it is happy to grow in the woods.

A member of the rose family, it produces a myriad of small white flowers (five petals) in the spring.

For me, the shrub when in full bloom gives a sort of oddly pleasantly honey-scent. The leaves are shiny green, each with a small notch at the tip. Oops, watch out for those thorns, as I said. In the early summer, each flower produces a green fruit, anatomically hardly different from an apple, only smaller.

By New Year’s, the fruits will have turned bright red (or orange on some varieties). And then one day, those robins will descend onto its branches, especially on a cold day, like we are having now, gorging until the sun goes down.

John Nelson is the curator of the A. C. Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia SC 29208. As a public service, the Herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org or call 803-777-8196, or email nelson@sc.edu.