A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2007 photo of unidentified shrub

Here (hopefully) is a pic of my mystery plant.

I hope that worked. If it did, can anyone tell me what this is? It's woody, some leaves are heart-shaped, some are arrow-head shaped, and most have purple-tinted edges. It is slow-growing, but is spreading. It came up a few years ago, and the shooting-star type flowers bloom in the spring. Thank you so much for all your help!

Lizzard,
It's in the night~shade family......

Got couple of questions,

Did you plant this or did it just sprout
up around your property????

Does it have bright red berries in the fall?

Weezie

Hey, Lizard!
Glad to see you got your picture on here!
Now you'll be burnin' it up with pictures!

That's a neat plant. Pretty.
Someone will know what that is, for sure.
(Just not ME!)

Cindy

How's this?????

Nightshade

How's that for speed???

Weezie

Yes, Cindy, Thanks for helpin' Lizzard out..
I'm very glad we could get the picture on....
It is sooooooo helpful in solving those
Mystery plants.....

And even though it's very pretty plant,
I truely love the purple flowers myself,
and it can be come invasive as well...
but I do let mine grow and pull it out after if flowers *with rubber gloves on too* but it
never completely goes away with just pulling...
It grows with under ground runners and seems to never stop..

And Lizzard, GOT ANY MORE MYSTERY plants?

Weezie

Wow! Thanks, everybody. I didn't plant it; it just came up by itself a few years ago. It does get the red berries. I've transplanted it and its babies a couple times, with no skin rashes or anything. I surely won't EAT it. Evidently my animals haven't eaten it, either, since they're still okay. I really like it; is it okay to keep it?

I do have one more mystery plant; a vine that comes up from a large fat white tuber every year. I don't have a pic of that one. It climbs quite fast, and has little clusters of hard berries in the summer.

You guys are great! I'm glad to have found this site!

Lizzard,
That is up to you....... if you have children that you feel may get into it, *like eating the red berries* or animals getting in to it....
Then I would say, get rid of it..
If you have no one that can be harmed by it,
keep it, I have it, *can't get rid of it* but I
know the berries are way more poisonous than the leaves, and the leaves are more poisonous than the roots.. but it's way in the back, it's a wild weed, it grows everywhere, so I leave it for the purple flower and rip it up before it forms berries....
And I have never gotten rid of it, but I don't go over board trying to get rid of it either.....

Always love a Good Mystery..
so, post a picture when you can.. we'll be here!!!

There's a very nice group we have here, very friendly, very talkative, lot's of info and fun stuff to do here, and even if you don't garden alot or what ever, there's a BANTER HALL to chat with everyone in there and no post goes unanswered...

And we never get off subject around here either!

Join right on in and don't forget, if you don't know something, don't ever be afraid to ask....
There's always someone around to lend a helping hand.

Weezie

My kids are 17 and 14, so not likely to eat the berries. I have other poisonous stuff, too, like the spurge with the lovely yellow flowers and poisonous white sap. And I have a wonderful Crown of Thorns indoor plant that everyone calls "The Attack plant"...I'm usually the only one who gets attacked. My husband just gets out the wire cutters and chops it off when it gets in his way.

The mystery vine won't be coming up for quite some time, I'm afraid...maybe April or May.

Thanks again for being so friendly and helpful!

What color are the berries on your mystery vine?

I have a mystery vine with berries. I've got a picture of it somewhere in my computer ...I'll try to find it and post it here. Might be the same as yours.

Cindy

The berries start out green, then turn dark purple, if I remember correctly. These vines are starting to come up all around the yard. When I dug one up to move it, the root was a fat white tuber about the size of a cantaloupe. Ohh, I can't wait till spring!

That sounds like mine!

I've been looking for that picture, but I have thousands of jpegs in my computer...

Hey, maybe it's still in my PhotoBucket...I'll look there.

Anyway, when I was pulling this mystery vine up (it got HUGE!) it gave me an itchy rash on my arms. But, I'm allergic to a lot of stuff, so that might have just been a "me" thing.

Cindy

Nope, not in PhotoBucket.
I must have deleted it when I was "cleaning".

Oh, well....see you in the spring with our mystery vines!
Last one here is a dirty, rotten egg!

Cindy

That sure is a pretty plant you found. Why is it, that the pretty ones are so toxic? *sigh* Anyway, I looked at the link Weezie posted, and did anyone scroll down and see this little bit at the bottom of the page?
Now, I'm gonna be all nervous about potatoes. I've seen lots of green potatoes, and just never thought anything about it before.

Meg

I've heard that about green pototoes. I don't worry too much about the poison stuff around here. I worked at a nursery a few years back that sold the spurge I mentioned earlier. One day someone told the owner that the sap was poisonous, and could cause blindness in children if they rubbed it in their eyes...she freaked out and threw out all the spurge plants they had. I took some home, and am still happy with them years later. Just don't rub it in your eyes! But then I raised my kids with cactus's in the house, too. they never touched them more than once. (Yes, I did lock up all the cleaning supplies and stuff like that!) Heck, when the cat scratches us, it reacts about the same as when I get sap on me from one of my poisonous plants. I haven't worried about it much so far. Hopefully no one will ever eat one of them.

Lizard,
We always like to warn the new gardeners...
and then they can access their home environment themselves,
better to be safe than sorry is a
motto I devotenly *is that a word?* live by!!!
Some gardener's never know these things...
There's tons of plants out there that are poisonous,
some of our most favorite ones are.
Like foxgloves, poisonous if eaten, yet, when
taken in tablet form, can save you from a heart attack...
plants can be and are our friends...
just cautiously and at arms length if need be..

Yes, I can not wait to see the other vine as well.

Do you have gardens/flowers???

Weezie

Nightshade family vegetables--tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplant--can aggravate arthritis. I used to read Prevention all the time and saw lots of letters about people who got relief from arthritis by omitting these vegetables. When my arthriits got really bad, I was desperate enough to try eliminating them, but often forgot--in a day or two I could tell I'd slipped somewhere.

When I told my doctor, she first thought I was nuts--which may or may not be true--but on one of my subsequent visits she said a friend of hers has been doing the same thing and had relief.

Now, though, I take other arthritis medications as well, but most of the time am getting around pretty well.

Hope this may help someone.

Ann

Weezie,
We lived next door for 10 years, and my father and grandfather lived in our present house (they were both widowers). They died last January, and since their house was bigger, we moved in here, and rented our little house next door. Anyway, my point here is that I spent 10 years working on the yard next door, and made a lot of progress, and now I have to start over with another mess. Right now the back yard is nothing but mud. The lawn died for some unknown reason a couple years ago. Disease, maybe.

I have plans for a patio with arbor roof and trumpet vine cover, boxed-in veggie garden beds, paths, and one small patch of easy-to-water lawn...and the rest xeriscaped with rocks and ornamental grasses and drought-tolerant flowers...you can see that I'm going to need you guys for advice!

Ann,
Thanks for the info. I don't know about those particular veggies, but I think we could all be a lot healthier if we were more knowledgable about what plants and herbs do for us. I have a couple of books about that, and we're slowly trying to eat healthier and learn what works, etc. I think there is a lot of knowledge about that from the past that we've lost today in our "synthetic drug" culture. Like what works on cancer, etc. I hope your arthritis still lets you work in your garden.

Lizard (Kim)

I live next door to my mom, and I swear
I'm doing more stuff in her yard than mine...

Fall clean up, she's always first and if I
get to mine I get to it...but sometimes
it doesn't always work out for you.....

I think the scenaro would be the same if something like that happens later on, but I will keep the back half of my property with all my gardens for me, and let the renters only have the front half....
So, I won't have to re~do all the stuff again later... I'll be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to old by then to re~do everything...

Well, we'll be here to help you on in all of your endeavors...we truely like to help those just learning....Looking forward to hearing all about the new yard!!

Weezie