Oriental Bittersweet (*Celastrus orbiculatus*)
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###### [](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Celastrus_orbiculatus%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-10-31.jpg) Photographed October 31 in Moon Township.
The brightly colored fruits are what you notice about Bittersweet. Two species of *Celastrus,* a native one (*Celastrus scandens*) and this invasive Asian import, are found wild in our area, but the invader has become much more common. It has rounder leaves than the native species, and the native bears its fruits in *dangling* clusters, whereas Oriental Bittersweet holds its fruits straight out from the stem.
After tiny greenish flowers, the fruits develop as yellow-orange berries.
###### [](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Celastrus_orbiculatus%2C_2015-10-17%2C_North_Park%2C_03.jpg) Photographed October 17 in North Park.
In the fall, the outer shell of these fruits begins to split three ways, revealing the bright scarlet fruit inside.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Celastrus_orbiculatus%2C_2015-10-17%2C_North_Park%2C_01.jpg)
###### [](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Celastrus_orbiculatus%2C_2019-11-11%2C_South_Side_Slopes%2C_02.jpg) Photographed November 11 on the South Side Slopes.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Celastrus_orbiculatus%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-10-31-2.jpg)
###### [](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Bittersweet%2C_2021-12-01%2C_Bethel_Park%2C_02.jpg) Photographed December 1 in Bethel Park.
These fruits linger into the winter, making a colorful show that made the plant attractive to gardeners. Once it was imported, it found our climate very much to its taste.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
CELASTRUS L. Staff-tree, Shrubby Bittersweet. Flowers polygamodioecious. Petals (crenulate) and stamens 5, inserted on the margin of a cupuliform disk which lines the base of the calyx. Capsule globose, orange-color and berrylike, 3-locular, 3-valved, loculicidal. Seeds 1 or 2 in each locule, erect, inclosed in a pulpy scarlet aril. — Leaves alternate. Flowers small, greenish, in raceme-like clusters terminating the branchlets. Twining shrubs of e. N. Am., e. and s. Asia and Austral. (Celastros, an ancient Greek name for some evergreen tree.)
*C. orbiculatus* Thunb. (round). — *Leaves suborbicular to broadly obovate, with crenate teeth; flowers and fruits in small axillary cymes.* — Roadsides, fence-rows and thickets, N. Y. to Va. and southw. (Introd. and natzd. from e. Asia)
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Celastrus_orbiculatus%2C_Montour_Trail%2C_2024-10-31-1.jpg)