Bittersweet Read Online Free Page B

turned the large yellow orange wreath in her hands, eyeing it admiringly. “China, I absolutely
love
this. It’s the prettiest bittersweet wreath I’ve ever seen. Just look—it’s simply loaded with berries. I’m going to buy it for my front door at home.”
    â€œHang on a minute,” I said, taking the wreath from her and examining it closely. “This is not so good.”
    â€œNot so good? What are you talking about?” Ruby snatched the wreath back. “It’s extra pretty, don’t you think? It’s kind of two-tone, with all those bright orange berries and pretty yellow thingies. It looks exactly like the one Martha Stewart made on her TV show. I love it. I want it. Your customers are going to want one, too. You just wait and see.”
    â€œThey can’t have it.” I pulled a second wreath out of the carton and looked at it closely, and then a third, and then the rest. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Martha Stewart used the wrong bittersweet. All these wreaths are going back to the woman who made them. I’m recommending that she burn them.”
    â€œBurn them!” Ruby was staring at me, eyes wide, aghast. “But
why
?”
    â€œBecause this isn’t American bittersweet. It’s
Oriental
bittersweet.” I pointed to a berry cluster. “These pretty yellow thingies? They’re the capsules that have dried and split open to reveal the orange fruit inside. If this were our native bittersweet, the capsules would be orange, too. And look at the way the fruits are positioned all along the branches, at the leaf nodes. In American bittersweet, the fruits only occur at the tips of the branches.”
    Ruby rolled her eyes. “Orange, yellow—so what? What’s so bad about Oriental bittersweet? You’re worried that somebody forgot to pay customs duties? Anyway, I thought these wreaths came from Michigan, not Asia.”
    â€œYep, they do come from Michigan,” I said grimly. I was lifting the other wreaths out of the carton. When I had examined them all, I began putting them back again. “Which is really bad, because it’s illegal to sell or ship Oriental bittersweet in or out of Michigan—and several other states, as well. This plant is a thug. A bully. A ruthless, aggressive, nonnativespecies that was introduced as an ornamental around the time of the Civil War and escaped into the wild. It loves to climb up shrubs and trees and smother them. And it hybridizes with the native bittersweet, which makes it even more thuggish.”
    â€œIllegal?” Ruby pushed her lips in and out, considering. “Well, maybe. But aren’t you overreacting? There’s not a chance in the world that this
dried
stuff is going to smother the trees in my yard. It’ll just hang quietly on my front door and look pretty.” She picked up the top wreath and smiled at me. “I want this one. How much?”
    I pulled off a dried berry and held it up. “See that? What is it?”
    Ruby frowned. “So it’s a berry. So what? It’s not poisonous, is it?”
    â€œIt’s a
seed,
Ruby. This pretty little package is a genetic time bomb.”
    â€œA . . . time bomb?” Ruby asked warily.
    â€œExactly. It’s not very likely to go off here in Texas, since this isn’t the plant’s ideal habitat. But what happens if somebody buys this wreath in my shop and decides to give it to her sister, who lives in Arkansas, or maybe Missouri? The sister hangs it over her mantel until the pretty orange berries begin to drop off, then tosses it on her compost pile. The next year, a dozen little green seedlings pop up. The year after that, a dozen not-so-pretty green vines are twining around the nearest shrub. The year after that, Katy, bar the door. Once this hoodlum moves into the neighborhood, there’s no getting rid of it.”
    Ruby shook her head. “That is too bad.