In the scheme of things you’d hardly notice the odd spindle tree (a sort of Euonymus) in the woods and hedgerows most of the year. Then in the autumn comes this magnificent splash of colour – first the clusters of bright pink fruit, and then the magnificently contrasting orange of the emerging seeds, all ready to be eaten by birds and thence spread elsewhere.

It is a spindly sort of bush or tree, and of course it would have been very good for making spindles.

Photograph taken at Anderton Country Park, November 2016