Shadbush blooming near Perring Parkway.

STREET NATURAL
Story by HEATHER DEWAR, photos by FERN SHEN

Give yourself a pat on the back if you know the connection between fish and these flowers. There’s a muffin connection too….

Sighted this week in Eastwood Field at Herring Run Park: a fine specimen of our native shad bush, its white flowers leaping out against a background of unfolding leaves. Shad bushes, also known as serviceberries, are relatively rare in the city. But they’re common along rivers and streams in Southern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore.

Tom Horton, the author, former Sun columnist and all-around sage, tells me he spotted the Shore’s first flowering shad bushes about three weeks ago.

The shad bush’s flowers are nature’s “all you can eat seafood” sign. They appear at the start of the spring shad run, when the fish move upstream to spawn. The fish were a staple of Native Americans’ and colonists’ diet. Entire settlements turned out in spring to catch the herringlike fish, then dry them or salt them in barrels for the winter.

Dam construction, overfishing and pollution nearly wiped out the region’s shad runs in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the fish hung on, and are making a comeback under the care of state and regional fishery managers, who have removed some dams and restocked some runs.

I’ve never seen a shad or a herring in Herring Run. But I take it as a hopeful sign that shad bushes are blooming along its banks. Their April flowers turn to reddish-purple berries by June or July – giving them yet another name, Juneberries. They “make great muffins, if you can beat the birds to ‘em,” Horton says.

Redbud in bloom, near Perring Parkway also.

Blooming right in time with them are redbuds, small native trees that like the dappled light along streams or at the edges of woodlands. Their tiny flowers bloom right on the leafless limbs, outlining the trees in a shade of magenta brighter than Crayola’s box of 64.On a gray day, the sight of the blossoms against rain-blackened bark is enough to make you shout out loud.

If you’d like a redbud or serviceberry blooming in your own backyard, visit the Herring Run Watershed Association‘s native plant sale May 10. The plants are bargain priced, and proceeds will go towards the group’s restoration and replanting work along Herring Run. For more information, go to www.herringrun.org.