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		Nature Conservancy Magazine: Autumn 2006 Nature Conservancy Magazine Sale of the Century Up Close Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom Hunter, Angler, Conservationist The Stamp of Conservation Nature Stories Podcast Nature Landmarks Nature Books Nature Travel Nature Preserves Subscribe Previous Issues

Lasting Impressions

Bittersweet © Matthew Frey/ Wood Ronsaville Harlin, Inc. Learn More The Conservancy works to protect native plants and to eradicate invasive ones.  Learn more about the work of the Conservancy's Invasive Species Initiative. Submit Your Story Learn how to submit your story about a lasting impression of a natural place.

Bittersweet Woods

Rediscovering a long-forgotten native plant rekindles childhood memories

Sunday afternoons in late fall, we packed into the family car with our buckets and sacks and drove into the Iowa countryside in search of hickory nuts and native bittersweet. I loved the drives down dusty gravel roads on those golden days when the sun shone brightly against the azure sky and the treetops were ablaze with red, yellow and orange leaves. But it was the wispy vine with the brilliant red-orange berries and pale husks tangled in the fence lines that fascinated me most.

This was in the 1950s, before fence-to-fence planting and roadside spraying and mowing. You did not need to drive far into the country to find bittersweet. It climbed up fence posts, slithered gracefully along old wire fences, entwined roadside bushes, crawled up tree trunks. These were less hurried times, when families still did family things. At the end of the day, we returned home to crack the nuts with a hammer on the basement floor, while Mom decorated the living room with the vine that we prized—a symbol of the changing seasons. As surely as tulips meant spring, green grass summer and pine trees winter, bittersweet meant fall.

Four decades ago, American bittersweet grew abundantly in the Mid-west. For generations, it withstood summer drought, winter ice and everything else nature could throw at it. It endured everything, it seemed, except the influence of man. In time, it disappeared from the fence posts, barbwire and roadsides.

As an adult, I no longer saw the bittersweet that so captivated me as a youth. I came across the fake version in craft stores where they sell plastic plants. I wondered if the imitation, so lacking the brilliance and delicacy of the real thing, was all that remained.

Then a couple years ago, I built a new home in South Dakota, near a nature preserve. Behind my house lie acres of cottonwood and cedar, native prairie grasses, and scrub brush. Here, coyotes, deer, foxes, turkeys and badgers roam undisturbed, and songbirds thrive.

One November day, peering deep into the woods, I noticed them—the brilliant red-orange berries. They hung in thousands of clumps, as far as I could see. The vine climbed cottonwood trunks and curled around small shrubs; it graced the tops of short trees and threaded through the branches of the wild cedars as if guided by the hand of a father decorating a Christmas tree. If there was a bittersweet heaven, this was it.

Unlike its Oriental cousin, which can choke a forest with a kudzulike vengeance, American bittersweet complements the woods, and lives in harmony with other species. Here, protected from poisonous spray, the blade and fire, this plant still thrives.

I stop by the woods frequently to study it. The brilliant berries cling tenaciously from fall until spring. Some are eaten by small mammals, birds and deer. I have seen robins
flitting from tree to tree in the early spring when the snow is still on the ground, tugging furiously at the faded berries until, at last, they give way. By mid-April, the last vestiges are gone, and the vine prepares for new growth.

Happily, I have discovered anew the mystical vine of my youth. By some wonderful quirk of fate, in my own back yard, I am surrounded by it—the vine that remains inextricably entwined with the memories of my childhood. Bittersweet memories, rekindled in these bittersweet woods.

—William Kevin Stoos

William Kevin Stoos is a lawyer and freelance writer whose work has appeared in Catholic Digest, Social Justice Review and elsewhere.