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From the children's novel 穿越魔雾 ("Fog Magic", page 18), I don't understand the part in bold below:

photo of page

”我刚刚应该是见到了西米恩老人,而且知道了他住在哪儿。这场大雾可真是有魔法呢。“她一边哼着小曲,一边穿过开阔的牧场。浆果密密地缀在灌木丛中,格丽塔停下脚步采了一会儿。等她走到这片空地另一头时,已经摘了三分之一桶的浆果。

I get the overall idea that 格丽塔 (Greta?) is contemplating the magic fog, and filling her bucket with berries. But I don't know how to understand this one part:

浆果密密地缀在灌木丛中
berries [浆果] are densely [密密地] [verb] [缀] in the [在……中] shrubbery [灌木丛].

In particular, I don't understand what 缀 means here. I'm guessing it's pronounced zhuì​ (and not chuò), and thus has one of the following meanings:​

缀 (zhuì)
CC-CEDICT: to sew / to stitch together / to combine / to link / to connect / to put words together / to compose / to embellish

So something like "string together", I'm not sure this is how berries grow on bushes.

Question: What does 缀 mean in 浆果密密地缀在灌木丛中?

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    Quote: "I'm not sure this is how berries grow on bushes" -- It is not how they grow, it is how they looked like. If I wrote, "the moon is hanging in the sky". Does it mean it is actually hanging there? It is just an impression
    – Tang Ho
    Commented Nov 21, 2020 at 1:24
  • perhaps interwoven? like, the berries arent superficial, it takes some effort to extricate them from the bushes Commented Nov 21, 2020 at 1:26
  • I agree with Tang Ho, it is a figure of speech Commented Nov 21, 2020 at 1:28

2 Answers 2

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浆果密密地缀在灌木丛中

缀(zhuì) here means 点缀, to decorate or to interperse.

Compare to this example below:

embellish a dress with lace and ribbons; // 用花边和丝带点缀衣装.

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缀 is an action of sewing or stitching, of course it's action by a human supposingly. The usage of this word here in the passage, it is called 比拟, a rhetorical way of describing: in this case, how the berries are entangled, as they were sewn onto the shrubbery.

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