Nature on our doorsteps: The Spindle Tree

Rosaleen Dwyer is the County Heritage Officer at South Dublin County Council – every week she gives us an insight into nature on our doorsteps and the beautiful biodiversity of its plants and wildlife.

ONE of our lesser-known native trees is the Spindle Tree. During its growing season, this small shrubby tree blends into surrounding vegetation in hedgerows or at the edge of woodlands.

The tree’s small flowers are relatively inconspicuous. They have four yellow-green petals which flower in small clusters in May, and these often go unnoticed beside the larger, scented, flowering boughs of Hawthorn.

It is really only in late autumn that the Spindle tree becomes more noticeable. Its green leaves turn flame red and its small fruit ripen to a bright shade of coral pink – an unusual colour in a native Irish hedgerow.

These fruits are well worth a closer look, however, as they are composed of a cluster of four rounded sections which makes them look like pink popcorn!

Underneath the outer pink layer are the four fleshy segments of the fruit. These segments are a bright yellow-orange colour, and they contain the plant’s seeds.

When the fruit is ripe in autumn, the pink layer splits open to reveal the yellow fruit underneath. While Spindle’s fruit are poisonous to us, these contrasting colours attract a range of bird species who come to eat.

The tree’s leaves are eaten by the caterpillars of moths and butterflies. They also attract aphids and their predators, including hoverflies, ladybirds and lacewings.

These insects in turn attract birds, especially in spring and early summer when chicks need to be fed. The cream-coloured wood of the Spindle is known to be hard and dense.

In the past, they were a useful timber for carving into small items like skewers, pegs, fiddle bows, toothpicks, and pegs.

It was also used to make spindles for use in wool spinning, and this is most likely how the plant got its name. It is suggested that Spindle is an indicator of very old woodland habitat, where their shrubby shape provided good cover for birds and mammals underneath the taller woodland trees.