Sinister spindle

Wild spindle grows freely in the Suffolk hedgerows. You hardly notice it for most of the year, but in autumn the leaves suddenly turn bright red, and it produces shocking-pink segmented fruit that suddenly split to show these bright orange seeds..

O, and they are VERY POISONOUS.

It's all most exciting.

Spindle is called spindle simply and plainly because the wood is very straight and hard and people used it to make spindles! It is therefore quite a common shrub in traditional wood-growing areas. We take a long view on tradition in Suffolk - the bottom fell out of our wool market in the fifteenth century - but if you go walking at the moment you will see masses of these scarlet leaves, vivid pink fruit and orange seeds decorating hedgerows across the county.