Plant ID help please

July 16, 2010 10:45 AM

Plant ID filter: Can you help me ID these two plants located in central Texas?

I think this might be a wild cherry. The leaves don't quite look the same from photos I'm finding on the internet though. Anyone know for sure? And what is this plant? It has little berry clusters growing from the leaves. Inside the berry cluster are lighter colored pods (for lack of a better word) that look like a white/light green flower.
Thank you :)

posted by GlowWyrm to home & garden (9 answers total)

That first one looks like a variety of plum, to me.
posted by sonic meat machine at 10:53 AM on July 16, 2010

It does look like a plum but on a smaller scale. They are about the size of regular grapes you buy in the grocery store. I should have put something up against them for scale. I just cut one open and the flesh inside is yellow and there is a pit in the middle that also appears to be yellow.
posted by GlowWyrm at 10:58 AM on July 16, 2010

Well, wild plums are much smaller than the plums sold in grocery stores. Not quite grape-sized, but only a bit larger. They do have yellow flesh.
posted by sonic meat machine at 11:00 AM on July 16, 2010

There are a lot of different plants in the genus prunus. They go from cherry to plum to peach, and every size in-between. Looks more plum-like from the bloom. Cherries are normally shiny.

The second one looks to me like some kind of honeysuckle, maybe a Limber Honeysuckle (see the young fruit picture about 2/3 down the page)
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 11:03 AM on July 16, 2010

The first one looks like persimmon to me. If you really want to find out for sure, I'd take a sample of each into the Natural Gardener and ask them.
posted by mattbucher at 11:46 AM on July 16, 2010

I disagree with persimmon based on leaf type-- those are pretty much lanceolate leaves as far as I can tell, which does tend to suggest some member of the Prunus family, so I'll side with LMDBA. Great! ... except that's a huge family. Wild plum seems to not be endemic to Texas, so probably not that one. How about some kind of nectarine? The leaves look right, the lack of fuzz seems right, and the time of year ripening also seems to fit. Any other clues you can provide? Like, what does the bark look like? Cherry trees have pretty distinctive bark. Do you know what the flowers looked like, or when they bloomed?

The second one? Beats me.
posted by norm at 12:12 PM on July 16, 2010

The first one looks like a sand plum tree to me. My mom has a few in central Oklahoma; it's not totally unreasonable to think you'd have them in Texas.

The second one, no clue.
posted by ThatSomething at 1:03 PM on July 16, 2010

I'm going to agree with Sand Plum... I think we've got a winner .
posted by SpecialK at 2:14 PM on July 16, 2010

It looks just like the sand plum pictures in both fruit and leaf. Thanks for everyone's help. :)
posted by GlowWyrm at 1:35 PM on July 17, 2010