Category Archives: Plants

Beautyberry 2025-06-15

Beautyberry fruits are setting: the flower petals are falling off and revealing the berries.

Not only are the flowers and berries pleasing violet colors, the leaves repel insects and ticks, and you can make jelly and wine from beautyberries.

Beautyberry fruit setting, 2025:06:15 10:36:03

Once the berries get some color, you’ll see why it’s called beautyberry. They’re a pleasing violet color. The flowers are an even lighter violet. Also, the whole plant smells good. Continue reading →

Seepage slope and bog plants 2025-06-15

Twenty one species in a thousand feet down the Not-a-Driveway from piney woods through seepage slope to beaver pond.

Plus Canis familiaris and garden variety human. While we did not see any beaver, Castor canadensis, there was quite a bit of evidence of them.

Species identifications are by Seek by iNaturalist, which is usually pretty reliable. I do doubt a few of them.

For example, what seek identifies as Pineland hibiscus, Hibiscus aculeatus, sure looks to me like halberd-leaf rosemallow, Hibiscus laevis.

Far more species than these live in our subtropical paradise. These are just the plants (and fungi) I happened to focus on today.

BB

Ten-angled pipewort or bog button, Eriocaulon decangulare, 2025:06:15 09:52:26

Continue reading →

Persimmon 2025-05-23

This volunteer American Persimmon is along the old road.

American Persimmon,

I will endeavor not to mow up this Diospyros virginiana.

-jsq

Wild azaleas and blueberries 2025-03-20

Down the Not A Driveway, over and under the Hurricane Helene deadfalls, following the dog pack, lies an acre of wild azaleas, plus wild blueberries.

Blondie, Honeybun, Sky, River, over the deadfall into the wild azaleas

Some of these Rhododendron canescens are already blooming. Many more are just budding.

Wild azaleas, pine deadfall, and dog on Not A Driveway

Wild azaleas and loblolly pine cones

Closeup red wild azaleas

Wild Blueberries

Pink wild azaleas

Pale wild azaleas

Wild azalea beneath oak deadfall

Closeup wild azalea beneath oak deadfall

“Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, … small ﬂowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.”
—Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit, The Two Towers, JRR Tolkien

-jsq

Yellow Jessamine 2025-02-17

A sign of spring.

Yellow Jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens

Its yellow flowers grow on vines, Gelsemium sempervirens.

Often you will see the flowers on the ground and have to seek upwards to find where they fell from.

-jsq

Potatoes 2024-05-21

Did I mention we dug the potatoes?

Potatoes

There were more than this.

-jsq

Blueberry Scacrecrow 2024-05-24

This scarecrow in the blueberries seems to be working. We’re actually getting some blueberries before the birds do.

Scarecrow and scaresnake in the blueberries

And here’s a better view of the scaresnake. It has since disappeared. Didn’t seem to blow off, since it would be nearby, and it isn’t. We guess a buzzard thought it would be a treat. Continue reading →