Beautiful bright red berries, dotted or clustered along the naked twigs of the black alder, add an indispensable cheeriness to the somber winter landscape. Bunches of them, commonly sold in the city streets for household decoration, bring twenty-five cents each; hence the shrubs within a large radius of each market get ample pruning every autumn. The leaves turn black before dropping off. The SMOOTH WINTERBERRY (I. laevigata), a similar species, but of more restricted range, ripens its larger, orange-red berries earlier than the preceding, and before its leaves, which turn yellow, not black, in autumn, have fallen. Another distinguishing feature is that its small, greenish-white staminate flowers grow on long, very slender pedicels; whereas the solitary fertile flowers are much nearer the stern. BITTERSWEET; WAX-WORK; STAFF-TREE (Celastrus scandens) Staff-tree family Flowers - Small, greenish-white, 5-parted, some staminate, some pistillate only; in terminal compound racemes 4 in. long or less. Stem: Woody, twining. Leaves: Alternate, oval, tapering, finely toothed, thin, with a tendency to show white variations. Fruit: A yellow-orange berry-like capsule, splitting at maturity and curling back to display the scarlet, pulpy coating of the seeds within. Preferred Habitat - Rich soil of thickets, fence rows, and wayslde tangles. Flowering Season - June. Distribution - North Carolina, New Mexico, and far north. Not to be hung above mirror and picture frames in farmhouse parlors, as we have been wont to think, do the brilliant clusters of orange-red wax-work berries attract the eye, where they brighten old walls, copses, and fence rows in autumn; but to advertise their charming wares to hungry migrating birds, which will drop the seeds concealed within the red berry perhaps a thousand miles away, and so plant new colonies. On the smaller, less specialized bees and flies the vine depends in June to carry pollen from its staminate flowers to the fertile ones, whose thick, erect pistil would wither without fruiting without their help.