Bluebird

This one is easily recognized as a Bluebird. I couldn't actually see it very well until I pulled out the camera so I thought it was just another one of the Mockingbirds that it was hanging out with. I don't know why one male bluebird was hanging out with 20+ mockingbirds, but he was.
Bluebirds are small thrushes. They have short tails and beaks, with a red-orange breast and neck, and blue head, wings, and back. They do have white undersides
They're bug eaters mostly, but do eat fruits too.
Bluebirds are commonly found on roadsides and near open fields.

Ragweed

Great Texas Ragweed Batman!
It's actually Giant Texas Ragweed, and I'm surrounded.
This one is IDed by it's leaves. About half of the leaves are three pointed and half of them are ovate. They grow oppositely on the thick woody stem, but can become alternating near the flowers. The leaves are a light silvery-grey and dull. The ovate leaves are serrated, the tri-pointed ones are actually just deeply lobed.
The plants can grow up to 4 feet (the pictured one is about that big) and have lots of flowers. The flowers are green and can bloom into fall, which they all seem to be doing right now; they grow on little stalks in clusters and look like tiny hanging bells.

If you're allergic to these buggers you probably know how to identify them already. If you're not allergic you should learn so you can rip them all out of the ground and burn them.

White Winged Dove

When I went out to get my mail the other day I heard a familiar bird call. It sounded like a dove, but since there have only been mockingbirds in those trees for quite some time I figured it was the mockingbirds again.
But, no, a quick scan of the tree line showed an odd looking dove. It was brownish-grey which made me realize it wasn't a mourning dove. As those are the only doves I knew about I was excited to learn something so new. I also relearned that pigeons and doves are in the same family columbidae and the terms can be interchangable in some cases.
The dove was in fact a White Winged Dove; so named for its distintive white stripe along the bottom edge of the wing when at rest and the middle of the top when in flight. Otherwise it looks like a pretty typical dove: long skinny neck, small head, chubby body, little dark stripe below the eyes. They have a dark brownish-grey body and a little blue around the eyes. They're large for doves, adults can be up to a foot long.
The white winged dove has a fairly southern range, so Texas is about as far north as they go.

Cool fact: Dodos were related to pigeons, so that means that two of the most famous animals to go extinct were pigeons.

Black Willow

Due to the growing difficulty in identifying the currently blooming flowers I've been looking more closely at trees. Early fall is an excellent time to identify trees, most of them have fruit and some of the leaves are changing color so you have both colors at your disposal.
May I present you with the Black Willow. It has a fairly wide range, from southern Canada to Texas, though is most commonly reported (according to USDA's website) south and east of the Great Lakes.
Black willows commonly grow to 50 feet, but can get up to 100, and although the trunks can reach 3 feet in diameter I have yet to see one with a 2 foot diameter trunk. They can have either singular or multiple trunks and have light grey-to-black bark with a slight reddishness to it. The bark peels back giving the tree a hairy or shaggy appearance. The branches grow upwards giving the tree a spear-like shape, but this is nicely offset by it's drooping willow leaves.
The leaves are long (to 6 inches) and thin (no more than .75 inches) with fine serrations and relatively short petioles*. They're simple and alternate and turn the most beautiful light gold in fall. The flowers show up in spring as a short catkin of non-descript kinda yellowish color.
Being a willow this tree needs abundant water, so it can be frequently see in ditches, dry riverbeds, and by lakes and rivers.
It's a fairly flimsy looking tree with thin branches and wispy bark, and true to its appearance its wood is very light and not good for building. The wood is good for making charcoal and it's light weight made it excellent for the manufacturing of wooden limbs. The shallowly thick root system also help in the prevention of erosion. Something especially cool is that willow bark has salicylic acid in it (the active ingredient of aspirin) and it used to be chewed as a headache reliever.

Two ways to tell it apart from the weeping willows are these:
Black willow - upward pointing branches, reddish branches.
Weeping willow - downward branches, yellowish branches.

*I know I mentioned this word before, the leaf's stalk, but today I found it's pronounced "petty-OLE" not "peh-TOH-lee." I'm not sure whether to blame this phonics failure on failure, dyslexia, or German double vowel pronunciation.

Cedar Elm

The Cedar Elm, or Texas Elm, is the most common and widespread elm in Texas. Not that you could've possibly guessed at that considering it's name.
I know I talked about the American Elm before and there are many similarities like the bark, leaf shape, and tree form. There are differences, too, though. The biggest (or maybe I should say "smallest") difference is the leaf size. Cedar elm leaves vary in size from .5 - 2.5 inches, whereas American elm's are 4 - 6 inches long.
I've seen a whole tree covered in leaves the size of my pinky-nail.
They're alternate, simple, serrated leaves with even veining and very short stems. The leaves may be glossy-looking in Spring, but the rest of the time they have a very rough feeling to them.
The bark is grey-brown with flakey vertical ridges, and occasionally smaller branches will have cork-like wings coming from the sides. These trees can grow up to 75 feet, but 30-40 is common.
The seeds are up to .5 inches and are called "winged samara," but they're just the little green ravioli. It flowers and grows seeds in the Fall. The flowers are fairly unobtrusive as clusters of short and hairy stems.
As it's a flourishing native plant it should be known that Cedar elms are tolerant of crazy high temperatures, clay soil, and low water. It's a easy ID and a good tree!


--I've gotten two different reports on Dutch Elm Disease, one said that Ceder elm is resistant and the other said American elm is the the resistant one. Since I've seen more writing that Cedar Elms are resistant to DED, I guess I should go with that one.

--Lacebark elm also have slightly smaller leaves, but the bark is a dead give-away. The bark has a lacy, patchy look of patterned brown and red/yellow.

Whatsit called... really...

Here are some of the most useful websites I've found for dealing with identification. The latter ones are Texas (or Southern) specific, the earlier ones are USA wide.

What's That Bug?
Bug Guide
Mushrooms
USDA - Department of Agriculture, it's good for finding plant's ranges. Just type the plant name and "USDA" into a search engine and you'll find a nice handy page.
Cornell Guide to Birds
Butterflies and Moths of North America

NC Wildflowers

NPIN: U of Austin ID site
Texas Trees, ID by leaf
Texas Trees
Lizards and Crocs
Texas Plants and Flowers
Texas Wildflowers

Dogwood

While this may be a pathetic looking plant, it is a Dogwood. A Roughleaf Dogwood to be precise. From what I can tell it's the only white berried dogwood in Texas.
It's common in East Texas and is what is referred to as an "understory" plant as it frequently grows under trees, though when grown in full sun it looks more like a thick shrub than a mini-tree. It rarely will get up to 15 feet. Roughleaf Dogwood blooms more profusely in direct sun then when it's in full shade. The trunks are very thin and flimsy looking and each plant is usually multi-trucked.
It has smooth, shiny, entire* leaves that turn vibrantly red in the fall. The leaves grow oppositely, are about 2-5 inches long, and are mostly ovular.
The stems are slightly reddish and contrast nicely with the white. The clusters of flowers are white and are visible April through August, the flowers themselves being about 1/4 inch and four petaled. And the hard berries are white and show up in August and stick around until whenever they're all eaten or fall off.

Dogwood grows best is moist soils which is why, I'm guessing, all the ones I've seen have been looking a little less than pristine.


*"Entire" in the context of leaves means no serrations, completely smoothed edged.

Ashe Juniper

Aka: Mountain Cedar, Rock Cedar, Post Cedar, Mexican Juniper, Break Cedar, Texas Cedar, or Sabino. It's amazing how many names one plant can gather. It looks a lot like a Eastern Redcedar, but the splitting of the trunk and overall shape are what made up my mind.
Ashe Junipers are flatter and generally have branching low to the ground and so appear to multiple trunks, but Red Cedars are taller and thinner with a singular trunk.
They usually grow between 15 and 30 feet, sometimes getting all the way to a whopping 45 feet. The bark is reddish and flaky, peeling off in long strands, and the trunk looks twisted.
The leaves are dark green, saw toothed, scaly, and well... junipery. I'm not sure how else to describe them, but just remember what this one looks like because that's what they all look like.
Since Junipers are conifers, it has cones. Like the cypress, though, it's cones don't look anything like pine cones. They look like little blue berries 1/4 - 1/3 inch long, they have a sweet smell and ripen in one year (not two like the Red Cedar).
Oddly, it's generally considered an invasive weed even in it's natural range, this is because of their shallow root systems that draws water away from other plants like grasses.

There's something about them that can give people awful allergies during the winter, so that's definitely something to watch out for.

Post Oak

While they may look slightly different all of these Post Oak leaves were taken off the same tree. Even though the leaves themselves might lend themselves well to the name "post," that term actually came from the fact that the wood was frequently used as fence posts due to it being tough and rot-resistant. It's also known as a Iron Oak due to the same reason.
It's a medium tree, growing between 30 and 50 feet tall, and it has the oak look. By "oak look" I mean the grey-brown fissured bark, the twistiness of the branches, the groups of leaves at the branch tips, and the seemingly clumpiness of the leaves when seen from afar. There's the obvious acorns, those give it away too quickly, that are slightly more round than many of the other oak species around these parts.
The cross shaped leaves are what make it an easy identification. They're alternate, simple, 4-6 inches long, slightly hairy on the bottom, and (as you can see) are tough - almost leathery - looking. They can vary a lot even on the same tree, but take a broad overview and it should be simple enough.

Oh, and it should be known that this is one of the more common oaks in Texas. If you can identify this one, Live Oak, and whatever the skinny spiky one is you should be fairly well set.

Crab Grass

Now here's a familiar sight to everyone in the USA. The ever growing, ever invading crab grass. They are native species, but are generally considered a weed for it's tendency to spread into gardens and choke out plants that are meant to be there.
It's distinguishable in it's wide and flattened blades, it's thick stems, and it's rough texture. It's heavy and lays fairly flat to the ground when it's in a mowed lawn, they grow in a circle around the main root and have densely packed leaves.

They're insanely difficult to remove, but if you're not concerned about the absolute prettiness of your lawn they're not a problem.
It grows best in full sun and in warmer areas, especially next to concrete. There are several warm climate grasses that look similar to Crab grass like Buffalo grass or St Augustine grass, but this is the one that's sharing my yard with the Bermuda grass. I wish I could explain the differences, but grasses are difficult as they all look just about the same.

Mockingbird

Just a few hours after posting about Scissortails and how much they look like Mockingbirds, I finally saw a Mockingbird. It's a Northern Mockingbird, and while it's range goes up to Wisconsin and New York it also goes down to Mexico. I guess North American Mockingbird might be a more apt name.
I've been hearing the state bird of Texas all over being very vocal, but this is the first time I got a good look. As luck would always have it the most interesting things come out the one time a week I go out without my camera, and this held true this time too. One reason plants are easier to identify is, even if you can't capture a picture, you can always take a piece home. You can't just take a bird home for identification, because even if you did there'd be quite a mess to clean up.

A Mockingbird call is both easy and difficult to identify. If you're somewhat familiar with bird calls and you seemingly hear five or six different bird species coming from the same spot in a tree... it's a good bet that you've found a Mockingbird. On the other hand, if it's singing unfamiliar songs it can be quite confusing.
The one I saw (only ten feet away, it was a bold bird) I found when I heard a bird song slide seemlessly into cricket noises.
They are smaller birds, only about 10 inches long and about a 1/3 of that is tail. They have white undersides and a light, dusty-grey back and head. The wings and tail are slightly darker but have little patches of white.

The eggs are blue with brown patches, but don't expect to see them as the adults are aggressively territorial. Nesting mommas are always more territorial, and I'm told they will land on people's heads and peck them if you get too close.

They're lovely birds with beautiful songs.

Of Wolf Spiders and Fire Ants

The momma Rabid Wolf Spider had her babies recently. Now you can see little spiderlings running all over our yard, clearly marked with the yellow abdominal stripes. They have been decreasing in number and, while I am quite happy that there won't be too many poisonous spiders running around my yard, I'm afraid that they have been fodder for the fire ants.
Either poisonous spiders or well-fed fire ants... neither sounds good.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

Since I have no pictures feel free to pull out a Oklahoma state quarter because this bird is right on the back. On the other hand, they're very beautiful birds and a minted representation doesn't do them justice.
It's a very distinctive bird, and you if ever see one you'll know what I mean. They are about 11-15 inches long, but at least half of that is tail (their tails alone can reach up to 9 inches long). The tails are divided in two, closed when at rest but opening and closing while flying. The name starts to make sense now doesn't it.
Scissortails are light grey on the head, breast, and upper back. They have dark grey wings, top part of the tail, and beak. There is one little stripe of bright red at their shoulder, it isn't always visible when at rest, but it's definately visible when the wings are spread. Sometimes they have slightly yellowish thighs, but since you should be able to make a pretty positive identification from the tail and size alone you probably won't have to be worry about their thighs.

Mockingbirds also have long tails but their's fans out and the top of their heads is darker as well.

Scissortails are a very localized bird, mainly found in Oklahoma and Texas with some ranging into adjacent states.

Anole

It's a wild anole. That much is certain, anyone who's had (or regularly been near) a pet anole would be able to tell you that.
That's all I know. Honestly there are so many lizards and geckos and anoles down in Texas that unless you catch one for observation or have studied these things it's hard to tell what they are. They move so fast and you never see their stomachs, it can be nigh-impossible.
The most common anoles are the Brown and Green, but the Green can be brown-ish sometimes as well.
The only really helpful piece of information I gleaned off the internet is that this one is most likely female as many species of anoles have striped females and unstriped males.

Ole anole!

Gecko

A Mediterranean House Gecko to be precise, and a fairly young one to boot.
I went to close my kitchen windows when... boing! this little thing jumped onto the screen. Far from being surprised I grabbed a jar and the baby and ran outside intent on being able to positively identify one of the lizards I've seen. It was by far the easiest wild animal capture I've ever made. I just snuck up and quickly encircled him (or her, I can't tell) and waited until he ran into the jar. I waited and waited and waited. Thank goodness for interior feline assistance that sent this little booger running around, I can not believe how fast he could run. Next I brought him inside to put him in a slightly larger, more photograph friendly, jar. In the second it took to place one jar into the other and cover the larger one, he nearly got out. I may not mind looking at lizards, but I will not stand for one loose in my house. He was intently watched for a little less than an hour and then released to his original place of origin.

As the name suggests, they are not native. They are flourishing though. These Geckos are nocturnal and may be spotted sitting on buildings nearby a light source just waiting for moths and other insects to eats.
Adults can grow to 5 inches long (this one was about 2) and they have flattish heads. The easiest means of identification are these three things:
1) The semi-translucent pale skin. On their heads you can see darker areas behind the eyes that's actually the eye, and if you get a look at the stomach you can see shadows of their organs.
2) The warty back. Each of those little dots is a bump, and they generally get more pronouced as they age.
3) The striped tail. Black rings down it's tail, even though the back is spotty.

And that's a Gecko for you!

Mustang Grape

I was very intrigued by this plant when I found it a month ago. The five-pointed leaves, the way it tried to vine it's way up the grass and just kept flopping farther day every day that I passed it, it was just very interesting. There's something about the leaves that really just beautiful.
The leaves are rich green on the top and lighter, almost white, on the bottom. The vine itself is reddish brown, and can climb quite high. When older it has a tough trunk and branches that look woody and flaky.The leaves are simple, alternate, 2-6 inches and normally as wide as they are long. The edges are toothed, but may or may not be lobed. That's the hard part, the leaves can be anywhere between triangular and the five-pointed stars you see in my pictures. They have very easy to see veins and are shiny on top.
The small flowers appear in spring in small clusters and are green. The grapes blue-black, 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch, and ripen in summer. By this time of the year they're all eaten. On that note, these grapes are edible, but the raw ones contain a whole lotta acid that will bother the exposed skin of your mouth and hands. Everything I've found says don't eat them raw, make them into wine or jelly, but if you must eat them raw remove the skins.

Hackberry

Or Sugarberry, or Sugar Hackberry.
This one has given me so much trouble, so much! The problem being is that sometimes the leaves are smooth and sometimes they're serrated. Or that sometimes they're mostly smooth with a few serrations. There are multiple varieties, and the leaves seem to be one of the biggest variable. There's also the problem that there are two different trees that are called the Hackberry, and the more commonly represented one online is the other one. Actually there's another tree called a sugarberry that isn't in the elm family, but that one only grows in very Southern Texas and Mexico - so if you're in Cross Timbers it's not your tree. This tree is in the elm family and is generally considered a good shade tree.
The leaves have three main ribs coming from the stem and protruding veins on the underside of the leaf. The tops of the leaves are rough, even when wet, the tips curve slightly, and the sides curl slightly when the everything is drier (at least that's what it has appeared like over the last couple months). They have short stems, uneven bottom, and droop on the branches. The leaves are simple, alternate, and usually shaped like a spear-head. They are thinner than they are long and grow up to 7 inches long.The bark is pretty uniform between subspecies so that's a worthwhile thing to check out. The bark is a light grey and starts out smooth but gets warty or ridged. This one is so ridged and lumpy at first I thought there was something growing on it. As you can see they can sometimes be multi-trunked.
The berries are drupes (a cherry is a type of drupe, stemmed with one pit) and begin to ripen in September as reddish-yellow and end up to be dark red-brown - almost purplish looking, in fact. The flowers come in the Spring, but as they are light green they're not very visible.
It's either a Sugarberry (Palo Blanco) or a Lindheimer Hackberry. But that's what common names are good for, one name can cover a good amount of things without being wrong. I do don't like being wrong, especially when it means I've spent a good amount of time researching and still get it wrong.

Hackberry Emperor

I posted this picture about a month back with the wrong identification, no thanks to the butterfly books I had. I couldn't find it anywhere, which is sad because it's apparently very common since one of its favorite foods (and name-sake) is here in Texas.
It looks a lot like a painted lady, but isn't. There's only one reason I found out what it is and that is... I found the name of the tree it's sitting on. When I googled the name of the tree to cross reference my hope that I had finally found out the name of this kind of tree (two months I have been trying, two months), the first picture was not of leaves it was of this oddly familiar looking butterfly.
It appears to be the southern Texas variety as shown by the three spots on the forewing. It used to be considered its own species "Empress Antonia" but now it's just a sub-species. The regular kind only have one main spot on the forewing.
It's a Hackberry Emperor butterfly. It's rather similar in appearance to the Painted Ladies, but a little less vibrant and with more eyes. The underside of it's wings is marbled brown with seven blue eyes on the back wing and one or three eyes on the forewing.
The top of the wings has the forewings tipped in dark brown which is edged in white dots. There are two little fingers coming down from the top of the wings as well. It's mostly orange-brown and the eyes show through from the bottom as black dots.
It has fishy looking eyes and fuzzy underbody. And one interesting thing I just found out is that their antenna have little dark bands all down the length of them.

That's it. Not a Lady, but an Emperor!

Jam Making

So, I made persimmon jam. It took a extra time to boil, probably because it didn't come to a boil as fast as it should've, but it seems to have set up all right. The canning process went beautifully! All three canned popped in a timely manner, and I'm positive they could sit on the shelf and stay good for quite some time.
The problem is that I'm not so sure on the taste. When I tasted the leftover tablespoon, it tasted dry. Part of the problem may have been that the persimmons weren't all completely ripe, but it seemed like I could've doubled the sugar called for in the recipe.
I'm going to open one tomorrow, see if it's the same. If it is, I'm going to try and figure out what went wrong and then attempt a fix.

I guess it's only right that my first ever attempt at making jam by myself should fail, it's a complicated process and I can't make things look too easy.


And just to let y'all know, the reason I haven't been blogging as much this week is because I've been reviewing everything I've learned up to this point. There's a point at which you have to take a break from shoving as much new information into the brain as possible. Next week should have regular updates again..

Cowpen Daisy

The Cowpen Daisy is a very very common plant. It thrives on "disturbed ground," which is a term I've been seeing a lot more lately... especially in regards to road-side wild flowers. I'm guessing that it means it's a fast returner, taking hold of loose or overturned ground quickly before other plants get a good chance. I have yet to find one solitary Cowpen Daisy plant, it's always three or more. And in the some cases nearly an acre of yellow.
As a daisy it's has ray flowers, usually 10 or 12 rays and each ray having 3 teeth. The flowers are about 2 inches in diameter. They have yellow petals, and yellow middles when they first open and yellow-brown centers after the pollen is gone.
The leaves are triangular and coarsely toothed. They grow oppositely on the stem and around it so from the top it looks four pointed. The color is a light silvery green and the whole plant is covered in a light fuzz.
These are late bloomers, their season is from Fall to early Winter.

Osage Orange

Known easily in the Fall by it's massive fruits, the Osage Orange, or Hedge-Apple (sometimes even Horse-Apple here in Texas), is a pretty common tree around here. My first thought driving past one on the side of the road was that it was an orange tree with unripe fruit, but oranges need a lot of water so I was skeptical. When they never started changing color, I was sure they were not oranges. While they may be named oranges, they are actually in the mulberry family (along with figs).
Since, like the persimmons, Osage orange trees come in male and female not every tree will have fruit. When the fruit is not there (whether it's a male plant or it's simply Spring) to help identify this plant another clue is the thorns. Where the leaf attaches to the branch there is a thorn, it's short and slightly lighter colored than the branch.
The leaves are alternate, simple, with smooth edges, generally growing between 3-5 inches long but can get up to a whopping 8. They are thinner than they are long, only up to about 3 inches. They have even bases, long stems, and are wider near the base and are tapered at the ends. The tops are smooth and glossy, but I don't know about the bottoms because all the leaves within reach were already dry.
The trees grow up to about 40 feet and have low lying branches giving it the appearance of a short trunk. The bark is dark and scaly and the branches produce milky sap when broken. The branches are very twisty and form a densely packed and rounded tree.
The fruit, as you can see, looks remarkably similar to green brains or a shriveling orange. They turn yellow green and last for months. They are quite large getting up to 5 inches in diameter, so around the size of a softball.

Despite being in a family with many edible fruits only the Osage's seeds are edible. There are up to 200 seeds per fruit, though some have none. I've seen the whole fruits smashed on the ground and they actually resemble old nasty mushrooms sometimes, they are gross inside. The edible seeds are covered with a slimy husk, which also must be removed in order to eat them.

These trees had many uses, it's really cool to read about. They were prized for making bows, they produce tannin for tanning leather, and due to the low and thorny branches it was used for a long time for hedge rows and fences.

Broomweed

I can't really find out much about Broomweed. Most of what I know is that, by comparing pictures, that's the only thing I can find that it could be. It's frequently a roadside plant, but can grow anywhere. Broomweed's natural range is mostly from Tennesee to Nebraska and anything south of that line.
The name "broomweed" originally both from the fact that it looks much like an upside down broom end and that early settlers used the dried plant as a broom end.
Broomweed grows up to 3 feet high and is less bushy around the bottom while getting very full and heavily branched at the top. There are many small stems and thin leaves. The blooms can be seen July through October, and the flowers are a big help in identifying it. The flowers may look like they have differing numbers of petals but really each flower is made up of up to 20 ray flowers and many disc flowers (think Sunflowers, dandelions, etc.).* They are yellow and between 1/8 - 1/4 of an inch wide.
Sadly, that is the extent of the information I could find both in library books and online (even after I knew what it was called). So while I'm fairly sure as to what it is the lack of availability of a proper description and photograph could mean I missed something.
Actually what's more frustrating is this one short post took me so long to research and write it took two days worth of allotted blogging time.


*This link will explain about composite flowers very well.

Chittamwood

I've walked by this particular tree every day and I've never really looked at it before. Actually, before it sprouted tons of little black fruits I found it so high I didn't even bother to see that it wasn't part of the oak in front of it.
I think this tree has the most names of any tree I've come by so far. False Buckthorn, Gum Bully, Gum-Elastic, and Ironwood to name only a few. But whatever you call this Sunbelt* plant, it's definitely interesting.
It's a shrub or small tree, from my experience not getting above 40 feet (although, apparently, it can get up to 80 feet).
The leaves are Obovate (which means they're bigger at the tip than the base), 2-4 inches long, slightly curved up, smooth edged, dark green, and shiny. They're simple leaves and they technically grow alternately - but they look more like they're clumped into groups of 5-10 leaves.
The fruit, as you can see, is black, small (no more than 1 inch), and shiny. They typically grow in clusters and have short stems connecting them to the branches - kind of like apples. The flowers they come from are five-petaled, white, and grow in clusters. The flowers show in summer and the fruit in fall.Some of these have a smattering of little spinies on the stems, but if you can't reach them anyway there's no point in worrying. Hopefully you can see this in the picture; the bark is dark but it has shallow crevices that show redness underneath.
Certain subspecies of Chittamwood have fruits that make great jelly (according to the awesome book I previously mentioned), but some of them can cause mild stomach upset. So I would suggest not bothering.

*I learned a new term. "Sunbelt states" refers to the southern states, east and west alike. It's just a stripe along the bottom border of the USA.

Fruit Gathering

I've been gathering fruit the last week or so, I have both persimmons and prickly pears. I'm not sure if I'll get enough to do anything special with them, which is sad, but we can always eat them raw.
Since the persimmons are ripening little section by little section I've been picking them, removing the seeds, cutting them into jam-able pieces, and freezing them. When I have enough then I can use them.
The prickly pears on the other hand need more preparation then that because you have to remove the mini-spines before you cook them for their juice (for jelly), but once you burn the spines off you want to cook them soon. Dilemma, dilemma. There is the option of driving around looking for patches of ripe prickly pears, but I'm not sure if I have that initiative.

The biggest reason I'm writing this though is to give a little advice.
I was stupid and picked the prickly pear fruit, which is sometimes called tuna(weird, I know), barehanded. It is possible to do so and come away unscathed, but not if you pick another one while holding one. I ended up with glochids all over my right hand and fingers, which is pretty nasty because it's an automatic hand full of itty bitty little splinters. The thing is I found a way to get almost all of them out virtually painlessly and quickly.
1) No pressure on the affected area
2) Run fairly warm, though not hot, water over the area until the skin is soft and the muscles are relaxed. This took me a couple minutes.
3) No soap! Just use a fine, non metal, scouring pad and rub.

It took me three scrubbings, but I only had three or four left after all that. It works, but what works better is being careful in the first place.

American Beautyberry

Such an apt name, the plant is really normal except for the vibrantly purple berries that make it amazing beautiful. It's a Southern only plant and it's berries ripen in fall and are a source of food for birds and deet in the winter because they last so long.
It's a shrub, getting only up to 6 feet tall, with large leaves (5-10 inches). The leaves grow oppositely on the stems and are serrated, they can also have a little bit of a patchiness to the green color. The flowers are light green and show up in spring and they turn into the small, pea-sized, shiny, red-purple berries that clump tightly together around the stem by the leaves.
They are not known to be poisonous, in fact the berries apparently make nice jelly. Due to the nature of the berries they aren't good to eat raw, they don't taste very good and can cause mild stomach upset.
It's also a natural insect repellent. I'm not sure how, but that's what I read on Wikipedia... so it must be true. I later corroborated this in a book, so maybe it actually is true.

Common Crepe Myrtle

I wasn't actually going to try to identify this one at first. I see it everyday and yet, until a few days ago, I never saw it growing wild. It was always in use as a decorative plant, which its great for as it's very aesthetically pleasing, and I figured it wasn't native.
I was right, it isn't native. The thing is it's gone native. I'm sure everyone reading this knows (or can easily find) about the disaster of Kudzu, but though Crepe Myrtle comes from around the same area it's acclimated well - it flourishes without being a nuisance.

Its long lasting flowers and smooth bark are what make it so easy to identify.
Depending on the variety it's either a small tree or large shrub; full grown it only gets between 15 and 30 feet tall. The trunks (as they're multiple trunked) are thin and smooth, and they look patchy due to the fact that they are constantly shedding bark. They quite honestly feel like someone spent hours sanding the bark smooth.
The flowers are pink, crinkly looking (think "crepe"), and grow in clusters. The flowers bloom throughout the whole Summer and Autumn. The leaves are smooth edged, shiny, about 2-4 inches, and grow oppositely on the stem.

There are lots of little things you can do to properly identify this tree, but I think the best way is to just look at the general idea of smooth mottled light/dark brown bark and pink flowers. It's a very unique plant, you probably won't get it wrong.