THE HEDGES are full of blue sloes, striking a very different note from the red berries all around them on the hawthorn bushes, the guelder rose bushes, and the black and the white bryony, which are flowers that creep over the hedges. The sloes actually have a blue-black skin, and their misty blue colour comes from a powdery bloom on them that will eventually get rubbed off. There has been a good crop this year, but one must be careful when picking them to use in sloe gin, since the twigs are covered with sharp spines.
Plums that originated in orchards and gardens are also found sometimes in the hedges, with their bigger and much sweeter fruit. These cultivated plums came originally from the Caucasus, and are thought to be a hybrid between the sloe and the cherry plum, a shrub from the Middle East which is also found in British hedges.
Yet another hedgerow plant with plum-like fruit is the bullace, a subspecies of the cultivated plum, with downy shoots, hairy leaves, and a few spines. The bullace has given rise to the damson. This is a complicated family!
DJM