Spindle Tree

Family

Celastraceae

Habit

Shrub

Height

6 m

Spread

4 m

Growth

medium

Lifespan

100 years

First yield

after 5 years

Hardiness

zone 3–7

Shade tolerance

light shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

very dry – moist

pH

5.3 – 8.6

Other uses: Spindle wood is strikingly hard, tough and fine-grained, which allowed it to be worked into very slender, strong components. Hand spindles were turned from it, giving the shrub its English name, along with shoe pegs, weaving shuttles and the cleaning sticks used by watchmakers. Charred, it yields the finest drawing charcoal of all, soft in the stroke and easy to brush away, which is why artists' charcoal is still made preferentially from it. Oil was once pressed from the oily seeds and made into soap; powdered seeds and bark served as a remedy against vermin on livestock and people, a use that should not be revived given the toxicity. In landscaping the shrub is valued for bank and erosion protection and as a bird cover planting.

Site: At 2.5 to 5 metres tall and 1.5 to 3.5 metres wide the spindle stays a manageable large shrub for hedge, woodland edge and copse, and it thrives from full sun into half-shade, best on calcareous, nutrient-rich soil that is not too acidic. In siting it, toxicity is the deciding criterion: every part is poisonous, the seeds most of all, and the strikingly pink fruits with their orange aril are extremely attractive to children. It does not belong in gardens with small children, beside playgrounds, or within reach of pasture and small livestock pens. Second, it is the principal winter host of the black bean aphid, which moves onto beans, beet and poppy in spring: keep at least twenty to thirty metres from the vegetable bed. Care: Undemanding and self-sufficient for water once established; water in dry spells for the first two years. It takes pruning very well and resprouts willingly from old wood, so it can be coppiced and kept as a clipped hedge. Prune in late winter, bearing in mind that every cut costs the following year's fruit, since it flowers on wood several years old; if you want the berries, thin only. It throws creeping shoots and rejuvenates itself, so sever them where they are unwanted. The spindle ermine moth appears regularly and can strip and web over the whole shrub in early summer; it looks dramatic but is harmless, as the plant releafs in July. Doing nothing is the correct response here.

The most reliable route is severing the creeping shoots: the spindle produces rooted suckers of its own accord, which can be cut away with a spade in spring or autumn and replanted at once. Layers work equally well and root within a year. Semi-ripe cuttings in June or July root readily under film, and hardwood cuttings in winter a little more slowly but just as dependably. Seed is the slow route: it has deep double dormancy and after ordinary autumn sowing often emerges only in the third or fourth spring. To speed it up, rub off the orange aril completely and give the seed a warm-then-cold stratification of about three months at room temperature followed by four months in the refrigerator. Wear gloves when handling the seed.

The spindle is an outstanding shrub for birds. Twenty-four bird species have been recorded at its fruit, stripping the fat-rich orange aril and passing the seed undigested; thrushes and robins are the most regular visitors, and because the capsules do not split until October they fill a gap in late autumn. The inconspicuous greenish flowers in May expose their nectar openly and are therefore visited mainly by flies, ants and short-tongued insects; with one recorded species the shrub matters little to wild bees. Nine caterpillar species feed on it, three of them exclusively, among them the spindle ermine moth, whose communal webs drape whole shrubs in early summer. The defoliation does the shrub no harm and in turn feeds numerous birds and parasitic wasps.

Notable: German name from the fruit - four-angled and pink like a Catholic cleric's biretta; called spindle tree because hand spindles were turned from the hard wood; yields the finest drawing charcoal there is; twigs conspicuously four-angled with corky ridges; winter host of the black bean aphid; fruit+aril colour a brilliant pink-orange and split open only in October.

Europe and western Asia. The spindle is centred on central Europe and ranges from Ireland and southern Scotland through France, Germany and Poland to Latvia; southwards it reaches northern Spain, Sicily and central Greece, and eastwards the Caucasus and Asia Minor. It is native to Germany, Austria and Switzerland and turns up in farmland hedges almost everywhere, most abundantly in limestone districts. In northern Europe the range peters out; in North America it was introduced as an ornamental and has locally naturalised. In the Alps it climbs into the submontane belt.

The spindle is a shrub of woodland edges, hedges, copses and slope scrub, and a character species of blackthorn scrub, the Prunetalia spinosae. It needs nutrient-rich, calcareous and low-salt soils and is therefore found especially on limestone and loess, in floodplains and along river banks where the ground stays base-rich and fresh. Indicator values describe it as a species of moist, half-shaded, neutral to basic and moderately nutrient-rich sites in the submontane belt. It favours half-shade at the margin of larger woody stands but tolerates full sun, and it is a typical companion of blackthorn, hawthorn and dogwood in established field hedges.