Nature and Gardening

6657 readers

1 users here now

All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.

See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.

(It's not mandatory, but we also encourage providing a description of your image(s) for accessibility purposes! See here for a more detailed explanation and advice on how best to do this.)

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

winter berries (beehaw.org)

submitted 11 months ago by solarpsychedelic to c/greenspace

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Cotoneaster, I believe.

Don’t eat. Taste bad and may be mildly toxic.

[–] LallyLuckFarm 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hmm maybe. The cluster looks similar to C. lacteus but the leaves don't appear the same to me. My guess was going to be Pyracantha even though I didn't spot thorns in the photo.

[–] solarpsychedelic 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

After looking at possible candidates, my guess is toyon Heteromeles arbutifolia:

https://debspark.audubon.org/news/plant-month-december-2019-toyon

[–] LallyLuckFarm 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This might feel like I'm giving you homework^[1], but below are pages with images and descriptions for each plant mentioned so far, along with a link to a dichotomous key for identification near the top of each page. There's a difference in the calyx (the star shape on the bottom, for those unfamiliar) that seems clear to me but it could be an effect of the camera lighting or position.

H. arbutifolia

C. lacteus

P. coccinea

[1] I totally am

[–] solarpsychedelic 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thank you! I like nature homework. Taking up photography has made me more aware of the variations and families of plants. 🌞🌿

[–] LallyLuckFarm 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I absolutely love hearing things like this! In case you're not familiar, I'd highly encourage you to make this hobby even more useful by submitting photos to iNaturalist - they share photos and location data with students and researchers for population studies, and it's got a pretty decent image recognition rate for suggesting which species you're looking at.

[–] solarpsychedelic 2 points 10 months ago

Good idea, thank you! 🌼

[–] solarpsychedelic 2 points 11 months ago

Thank you, they look similar to cotoneaster, yet I think they're toyon berries (see also my answer to comment below).