When I was young I remember my grandmother telling me not to eat blackberries after Halloween as the púca pissed on them. Over the years I heard of variations of this superstition where the púca spat on them rather that urinated or where the event took pace at Michaelmas rather than Halloween but I followed her advice.
I didn’t think much about the reasons behind this but Charles Dowding’s recent mail-out contained a bit about the effect the shorting of the day has on the plants ability to produce sugar…
Dimming down
The saying goes that on 10th October, the devil spits on hedgerow blackberries.
Why?
Because there is not enough light to enable photosynthesis for making sugars in fruit.
Ripening is from sunlight being synthesised by leaves. Some of it ends as sugars in fruits and leaves too.
So it seems that in October, the drop in daylight hours and temperature triggers a shutdown of a plant’s sugar-making process, leaves lose their green chlorophyll, halting photosynthesis and cutting off the pipeline of sweetness to any remaining fruit, left stranded on the branch/vine without a sugar source, late-season fruits cannot break down their bitter, defensive tannins, causing them to stay permanently sour, absorb the autumn dampness, and rapidly succumb to mould and rot.
