No other hedgerow plant discards its green anonymity with the same psychedelic fervour as the spindle (Euonymus europaeus). Its incandescent foliage looks surreal, like an autumn photograph intensified to maximum colour saturation. Even after the crimson leaves have fallen, cerise fruits bauble the branches, opening their sleepy lids to reveal four glistening orange orbs – the seed-containing arils – peeping out of the fruit capsule.
Spindle’s wayside brilliance must have caught the eye of William Turner as he travelled between London and Cambridge in the 16th century. The father of British botany recorded this deciduous shrub growing in the hedges between Ware and Barkway in his 1548 seminal book on British flora: The Names of Herbes. His was the first record of a wild plant in Hertfordshire and the earliest known reference to spindle anywhere in Britain.
