Yew berry

The five photos posted this morning were all taken yesterday, 11 September 2018. Our botany season has come to an end and so our main Naturalist had a group of us visit his amazing garden and a walk to look at wild and garden plants in his neighbourhood. Not the greatest weather, but at least the rain kept away. I think rain is in the forecast for the next week, which is a pity, as the fall leaves will all be on the ground before we know it. Mixed precipitation tonight.

"Members of the yew family and the closely related Cephalotaxaceae have the most highly modified cones of any conifer. There is only one scale in the female cone, with a single poisonous ovule. The scale develops into a soft, brightly coloured sweet, juicy, berry-like aril which partly encloses the deadly seed. The seed alone is poisonous. The whole 'berry' with the seed is eaten by birds, which digest the sugar-rich scale and pass the hard seed undamaged in their droppings, so dispersing the seed far from the parent plant." From Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxus_baccata