Firethorn

This happened:

I did not know what was growing in the fenced corner of our yard when we first moved in. It was this awkward small shrub but I could not ID it.

In just a few years it got big and wild, and I noticed pretty white flowers one spring, and finally one year I saw orange berries.  I also noticed weapons grade thorns on the long arching branches. 

That's when I realized I have one of the ubiquitous firethorn shrubs. 

Green shrubs studded with orange berries are noticeable everywhere here in fall. You can't miss them, the berries are flaming bright and the shrubs are giant. They are pyracantha, also called firethorn.

Firethorn in Santa Fe is like forsythia in New England -- misused, overplanted, hacked into terrible pruned shapes, and always way too big for the spots they are in. 

There are too many firethorn monster shrubs all over town, and like the screaming yellow of forsythias in bloom, firethorns in fruit are stridently orange. 

I have never watered this plant ever. The leaves stay healthy green, never scorched and no bugs seem to find it. I have hacked at it with my loppers, the way you do with a forsythia to control its size, and it just laughs at me. 

I'm tired of seeing pyracantha everywhere and I'm concerned the one I have will get too big, but I have to admit it dramatically fills an empty spot at the corner of the fence. 

The thorns are very scary, though. 

(By the way, forsythias, the shrub I loved to hate back east, do well here. Not overplanted, not so chaotic or disordered, they form nice bushes here.)