Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Carolina Snailseed

This shiny vine with it's bright orange-red berry clusters is a Carolina Snailseed, aka: Carolina Moonseed, Coralbeads, and Redberry Moonseed (doesn't that sound like a hippie name?). There are lots of things you can notice or use to identify this plant, but if you see a plant and you think it's a Snailseed here's what you do. Pick a berry, careful though, they are poisonous but I just don't know how much so I wouldn't recommend getting juice on your fingers if you can't wash it off; then stomp on it. I say stomp because you want to obliterate the berry leaving just the seed behind. The seed is very distinctive - it looks like a snail (or a while caterpillar curled around a tiny plate). The seeds are a 1/4 inch at the max. Unfortunately the fruit is only available right around now, the September-November time.
The rest of the plant is very hardy, it's a Southern plant so it can a lot of heat and it's drought resistant as well. This vine just grows up and up and up; I've seen it 20+ feet up in trees. Just so you know this does not have thorns, the vines are smooth and round, the thorns are on a different vine (that's for me to know, and you to find out tomorrow).
The leaves are rich green (though not particularly dark), they are shiny above and dull and slightly fuzzy beneath, they're around 3 inches long. The bases of the leaves are flat, the whole thing is a rounded triangle shape. The veins are mostly straight, there may be some curve but not a lot.
The flowers appear between June and August, they're very non-ostentatious as they're a light green. The fruit then shows up as the same light green as the flowers, they're clustered a lot like a wild grape.

It's a pretty standered looking vine, what really sets it apart is the fruit and seeds.

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