Why Autumn Hedgerows Are Worth a Closer Look

By late September a good mixed hedge is doing two jobs at once. It is a larder, and it is a map: the colours along the lane tell you which shrubs are growing where, even before you have found a leaf. Learn three of the commonest fruits — sloes, haws and rosehips — and every walk becomes a little more legible. You will also begin to notice which stretches are feeding the birds and which have been flailed so hard they are running bare.

Look at the whole plant, not just the berry. Check the leaves, the twigs, whether the fruit hangs singly or in clusters, and how big it is. A handful of features is usually enough.

Sloes: The Blackthorn's Dusty Fruit

Sloes are the fruit of blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), the same shrub that foams with white flowers in March. They ripen in September and October, and by then the blackthorn is often nearly leafless, so the berries seem to float on bare, inky twigs.

Look for round fruits about a centimetre across, deep blue-black but covered in a pale, cloudy bloom that wipes off with a thumb. On the same twig you should find long, sharp thorns, so pick with gloves or hook a branch towards you. Squeeze one and you will find a single stone inside. Bite it and you will regret it: raw sloes are drying and fiercely astringent. That fades after frost, or after a spell in the freezer, which is why most of us keep them for sloe gin, jelly or spiced cordial. They are much smaller than the damsons and bullaces of a garden orchard.

Haws: Hawthorn's Long-Lasting Crop

Haws belong to hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), the backbone of most old British hedges. They are small, oval and a deep, slightly dull red, hanging in loose clusters among the leaves, each holding a single stone.

Confirm the shrub by its leaves: small, glossy, cut into three to five deep lobes with toothed edges. The twigs carry thorns a centimetre or two long on greyish-brown bark. Haws taste mealy and faintly sweet, closer to a soft apple than a proper berry, and they are best cooked into ketchup, fruit leather or jelly. They hang on well into winter, which is exactly why they matter later in the year.

Rosehips: Red Lanterns of the Dog Rose

Rosehips are hard to mistake once you know the shape. The commonest are those of the dog rose (Rosa canina), which scrambles through hedges on arching, thorny stems. The hips are oval to flask-shaped, one to two centimetres long, glossy scarlet or orange, and each has a small tuft of dried sepals at the tip, like a brittle little crown.

The pulp is packed with vitamin C and makes excellent syrup, jelly and vinegar, but the fine hairs around the seeds are a genuine irritant, so never chew them raw. Simmer the hips whole and strain the liquid through a double layer of muslin rather than a metal sieve, which lets the hairs through.

What These Berries Do for Wildlife

Hedgerow fruit is not there for us. A single mature hawthorn can carry thousands of haws, and that crop is the reason fieldfares and redwings fly here from Scandinavia each autumn. Blackbirds, song thrushes, mistle thrushes and, in a good year, waxwings all strip haws and hips through the winter, often after a hard frost has softened them.

Sloes are eaten too, though usually later, once the sweeter fruit has gone. Fallen berries and stones are taken by wood mice, bank voles and hazel dormice. Hips left on the dog rose through December are often the last food standing when snow covers the ground. A hedge stripped bare by November is not a hedge that has failed — it is one in a hungry parish.

Foraging Well and Leaving Plenty Behind

• Pick only where you have permission on private land, and from hedges you can reach safely. Leave roadside berries below waist height; they catch spray drift and worse from passing dogs.
• Take a modest share — roughly a tenth of what a bush carries — and leave the lower, outer branches for ground-feeding birds.
• Wear gloves and take secateurs. Blackthorn thorns snap off under the skin and rose prickles scratch.
• If you are not certain, do not pick. Yew, black bryony, woody nightshade and deadly nightshade all carry red or black berries in the same hedges, and several are seriously poisonous.
• Wash your harvest and freeze sloes for a few days before use; it mimics the frost and softens the skins.

Learn one hedge through the autumn and you will read it in every other season, from the white froth of May to the bare, thorny architecture of January. That is the quiet pleasure of it.