Mountain ash trees are laden with dogberries this year.
Is this an indicator that Mother Nature is trying to send the message that a tough winter awaits?
Henry Mann, a retired biologist and botany expert in Pasadena, says he has heard the opposite argument that dogberries being plentiful could actually mean a good winter is coming.
“It depends on who you talk to and they may have some truth to them,” he said. “For instance, if there’s lots of dogberries, some people say it means a hard winter because nature is providing food for the birds. But some people say the opposite — that lots of dogberries means it will be a good winter — and it’s nature telling us everything is going to be fine.”
Call it folklore or an old wives’ tale, but the science behind ample dogberries likely speaks more about the season that just ended. A tree with plenty of fruit indicates the passing summer and the preceding spring had favorable growing conditions.
Some trees, including a variety of fruit trees and conifers, set their buds for the following season late in the year before. Mann said it is likely that a bumper crop this season meant last season featured good conditions for the plants to set their structures for regrowth this season.
While he’s not sure the presence of berries provides an accurate forecast, weather does play a role in the amount of fruit bearing or flowering any plant does, even when there are plenty of buds set in the previous fall.
“If the weather is cool and the pollinators are unable to fly and get around early in spring, you could have a very poor crop,” Mann said.
“Some plants only have their flowers open for a week or two for pollination. If that particular week is stormy, rainy and cold, you may not get very much fruit that year, even though they had a lot of flowers.”
While Mann doesn’t pay much attention to the abundance of dogberries, or a lack thereof, he said there may be more credence in other meteorological harbingers.
He said the notion of a red sky at night indicating fair weather is coming or a red sky in the morning as foreboding a storm might be more reliable observations.
He’s also heard of one notion, believed to have come from the fur trappers claiming a beaver’s thick hide is a sign a colder than usual winter is on the way.
No trappers were interviewed for this article, but, for the record, Environment Canada is calling for a normal winter for Newfoundland and Labrador in 2018.
