Bittersweet berries are part of the traditional New England fall/Thanksgiving table center piece. I don’t know enough about Bittersweet to know if this plant, found along the trails at Laudholm Farm (Wells National Estuarine Research Center) is American or Oriental Bittersweet. American is, as the name implies, the good Bittersweet…a native plant that is in danger of being pushed to extinction and hybridized out of existence by the invasive Chinese Bittersweet. As is so often the case, Chinese Bittersweet was intentionally introduced to the US and planted along thousands of miles of roadways and embankments to prevent soil erosion. That was before they knew how fast it would spread and how easily it hybridizes with American. Good idea? It turns out not.

By the way, the berries might look tempting, and are a fall treat for birds and rodents, but they are poisonous to man.

Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill.  24mm macro, with 1.5x digital tel-converter for image scale and working distance. The berries are just over live size on my monitor. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.