Spindle fruit

Look out for spindle fruit with the conspicuous colour combination of shocking pink four-lobed fruit, now mostly open revealing bright orange seeds, among vivid crimson and yellow leaves. The fruits are eaten by birds including thrushes, finches and tits while the green four sided stems provide host sites for the eggs of black bean aphids to overwinter until hatching next spring. Larvae of butterflies and moths use spindle leaves including holly blue butterfly and spindle ermine moth. It hosts a gall produced by a gall mite and a multi-layered brown bracket formed by a bracket fungus. Spindle also known as pegwood is part of our native Irish biodiversity.