Some kind of holly

Yes, I said to my companion, this is shadbush again.

But no sooner had my statement passed my lips - and the berry pass mine and his - than I realized something was amiss. The leaves were too spiny and rose-like, the berries too clumped.

At the same, an acrid, medicine-like taste infused both our mouths. No, definitely not the serviceberry/juneberry/shadbush/saskatoon that delighted our senses on another recent trip.

I wracked my brains for alternatives, mentally revisiting various tempting berries, like Alder Buckthorn, that had fooled me more than is seemly for a purported naturalist, especially one advising someone who’s advising their toddler about what’s OK to eat and what’s not.

So far, I’ve settled on some species of Ilex, i.e. holly, though I’m not sure what. If it really is that, it comes by its medicinal qualities honestly. I read on wikipedia (where else?) that it’s pretty caffeinated, but more interestingly, it turns out that yerba, that plant from which Argentinians make maté that the gauchos encountered by Darwin (among others) endlessly sipped, is an Ilex too.

Who knew? And who suspected this would all follow from one ill-advised sampling of a plant in a suburban park.