In the fall after most of the trees are bare around my house and I have soaked in the last vibrant bittersweet, crimson, and gold, I head for protected forests knowing that I can extend fall glory by visiting trees in these untrammeled places. This habit of mine is in direct response to what I call ‘autumn dimming’. Overall, our colors are less striking, and the season is brief, no longer extending over two months when the swamp maples first used to open the show, and the beech and oaks turned from various shades of lemon and gold to dull brown as they ended the season.

I am moving with/adapting to Earth’s changes. Instead of searching for vistas of bountiful color this year, I concentrated on individual trees or bushes standing beneath or beside one or two immersing myself in the leaf color above or around my head.

The native Hobblebush’s ever-shifting kaleidoscope of riotous colors stole the fall show everywhere I walked through the understory, reminding me that I wanted to write about this wild viburnum, which is so easily overlooked after spring bloom. The viburnum genus includes nannyberry, arrowwood, and highbush cranberry and all are popular with wildlife.

In late summer beginning with a crimson blush on heart green leaves, it isn’t until autumn that the once-green berries turn lime, pink to scarlet, ripening into deep purple. In late September the leaves explode into extravagant shades of pink and rose, lemon, bittersweet orange and gold.

I deliberately choose to be in the woods including the two times of the day when the slanted light infuses the trees with an unearthly glow to intensify my autumn experience. I notice this adaptive approach is very satisfying and by November after most of the leaves are fertilizing the soil I feel as if I have been totally present in every possible joy that comes with fall. A good way to live.

By mid-November, I am still taking to the woods almost every day for more earthy reasons, noting the first skim ice, shrunken sphagnum, clumps of pincushion, and other mosses that line the serpentine stream banks along with a few crimson partridgeberries. Some shining wintergreen leaves are somewhat dulled by frost highlighting the ever-green princess pine and other earth-loving creepers. Most plants and trees are preparing for winter sleep including the hobblebush whose bare branches have produced buff-colored horn-like projections.

If not decimated by deer these buds will begin the spring season by bursting into bloom with one of the first lace-like clusters of pearl-white flowers. The fragrant blooms are flat-topped and range anywhere from 2-6 inches wide. The sterile blossoms on the outer edge of each cluster are much larger than those in the middle that are fertile. According to some researchers, the larger flowers attract the pollinators and once they arrive, they visit the smaller flowers that have both female and male parts that will aid in the plant’s reproduction. An interesting hypothesis.

During the summer, the heart-shaped leaves and twigs get lost in the rich moist woodlands where they love to grow under hemlock, cedar, and some mixed hardwoods sometimes in a dense tangle. Some researchers say Hobblebush grows in drier areas but that certainly does not match my experience. This viburnum likes moisture.

The branches grow close to the ground because they can reproduce by creating clones (why can’t they use the term relatives – too close to ‘human exceptionalism’ no doubt). The calf-high branches dip close to the earth touching, taking hold, and sprouting roots. As an understory tree, they manage well without strong light.

I used to find hobblebush nestled amongst the cedars, hemlocks, and mixed forest along the Gore Road in moist places, but they have all disappeared. Sensitive to human disturbance these viburnums are less common than they once were throughout the Eastern US, and because of their complex relationship with the mycelial web, they cannot be transplanted.

Hobblebush is often called ‘witch’ hobble (here we go again demonizing) because its branching habit supposedly trips walkers! The shrub is endangered in some states. Maine might become one of them.

The black-throated blue warbler loves to feast on the berries and will sometimes nest in dense clumps of hobblebush along with other visiting songbirds like black-throated green warblers, grouse, woodcock, and cedar waxwings.

I have one secret place that I visit in the spring near a huge clump of hobblebush just so I can listen to the blue-headed vireo, as well as the Blackburnian warbler. In addition, this area has one of those large granite rocks covered with polypody ferns and so many lichens that I could spend all day identifying them!

Instead, I run my hands over the nubbly surfaces, thanking them for being some of the first plants on earth that eventually gave birth to me. Very comforting; they’ll be around in some form long after humans have departed (reference is to deep time, not human time – every species faces eventual extinction, but some of the ancestors will take us back to new beginnings).

Unfortunately, the deer also love to eat the branches and leaves of this plant, another reason it is disappearing from our area. I have lost almost every bush I had here to deer until I started putting chicken wire around, and over bare twigs. As the reader can imagine chipmunks, and squirrels also find these berries a tasty treat. No doubt moose and bears do too. According to a couple of sources, hobblebush is the larval host for the Spring Azure butterfly.

Not only do I have a penchant for this bush, but I can also find many of the wildflowers I love like starflowers, cucumber root, and wood sorrel around or underneath the leaves. With the rest of nature, every living being is intimately connected to countless different others, and I am so grateful to be forever learning more about the complexity that I know so little about overall.

Whenever I visit a favorite forest at any time of year all I can feel is profound gratitude that such islands of peace still exist for now.

My earnest hope is to be climbing through tangles of Hobblebush and their neighbors for a little while longer before the forest begins her long winter white sleep.