It’s time for another edition of Name That Mystery Plant! Readers were able to help me identify a Cornelian Cherry in NYC, a nightshade in my garden, and possibly the mystery yellow tomato I got at a plant swap (though I still think the tomatoes were too big to be yellow pears).
This weekend out at the community garden I noticed a very interesting vine climbing across a couple of shrubby fig trees. The vine was bearing the most remarkable berries – it looks like they start out gray, turn a brilliant robin’s egg blue, and then turn violet purple. And green, somewhere in there. Or maybe it just produces different colors all at once. Take a look:
What is this? I doubt it’s edible, but it is quite pretty.
Wild grape vine. Very invasive.
I know I have read about this on another blog earlier this year, but I can’t find it.
It’s porcelain berry, Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, I think. The other option would have been raccoon grape (aka heartleaf peppervine), A. cordata, because of the leaf shape, but the berry colours, according to pictures I found on the Internets, are off for that species.
Yep, porcelain-berry. Very invasive exotic. See http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/FORESTRY/invasivetutorial/Porcelain_berry.htm
The leaves look very much like grape leaves. (The web images of the leaves of the porcelain berry look different in different photos. It’s confusing.) Look at wild grape, vitis labrusca, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_labrusca, but note the warning to distinguish it from the poisonous Canadian Moonseed (though those leaves look different to me). Hmmm.
Thanks, all! Excellent sleuthing skills.
Oh my gosh, it’s porcelain berry – pull it out now! The birds eat the berries and then spread it all over the place. It’s terribly invasive. The house next door to me is a rental and has every possible invasive vine on the property and this is one of them.
The liquid inside this berry stains for a very long time. I did not realize this and was pulling them off my hibiscus plant. My hands were purple for almost a week.
It appears to be a possum grape. Never ate them but, people used to make jelly from them.
Did you ever figure out what these berries were!? I just discovered some in the woods this past weekend and am dying to know what they are! I live in Connecticut.
Moonseed Berry?