Found a couple of nice young callery pears in the edge of my woods yesterday… and nearby… a little further back in the woods shade… found this bushy plant growing… around 6 ft tall… 4 ft wide… growing in a thicket with a bunch of other wild stuff.
The seed pods is what caught my attention… at first i thought possibly some type of nut might be developing in those… but i know of no such type of wild nut that grows here.
I cut one open and it has something more like a berry/seed inside. Nicely colored.
Anyone know what this is ?
A bird could have planted it… it is just off my field in the edge of the woods.
@disc4tw — I think your app thing may be right. I looked up some more images of strawberry bush and found the one above. Looks like the somewhat spikey husk eventually turns red and splits open and the more orangish berries/seeds inside sort of pop out.
In the image above the Leaves, stems, match pretty well. In the image you found it looks a little different, but looks to be in a lower light location. More light more thick and bushy… that is how mine is.
Can’t say I have ever noticed one of these around here… but they say Tennessee is part of it’s native range.
Too bad they are not real strawberries or something nice and edible.
I see varying opinions online but most seem to agree, not edible by humans (without some strong side effects).
Traditional uses and benefits of Strawberry Bush
Seed is strongly laxative.
Tea made from the roots is used in cases of uterine prolapse, vomiting of blood, painful urination and stomach aches.
Bark is diuretic, expectorant, laxative and tonic.
It was used as a tea in the treatment of malaria, liver congestion, constipation etc.
Powdered bark, applied to the scalp, was believed to eliminate dandruff.
An infusion of the plant has been used to stimulate menstruation and so should not be used by pregnant women.
Native Americans used the roots of Strawberry-bush to make a tea for stomach and urinary problems and uterine prolapse.
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It should be quite pretty once those seed pods turn (strawberry colored) and the orange/red seeds pop out. I will try to remember to get a Pic of it at that point and post here as a update.
There is a Strawberry tree,Arbutus unedo,that grows around Seattle and other parts of the world.The fruit somewhat resembles the outside pods of some Euonymus species but spikes are a little less prominent and the flesh is pasty,with numerous small,hard seeds.
They are common on the Natchez Trace from the Tennessee river up to Nashville.
This reminds me that I need to visit Burns Branch in about 6 weeks to see if the black walnut tree produced another crop of oversize walnuts. When I visited last fall, I picked up several walnuts from the trees growing in the area. Several were a bit larger than average indicating genetics are in the area for large nuts. One tree in particular was nearly twice the weight of most normal walnuts with correspondingly large kernels inside.
Guess I was right but never remember seeing that one (of the south)
In the bittersweet family (poison bittersweet is) Celastraceae
Keep in mind bittersweet is a different family then Kiwi , but said to diverge from kiwi so some relation just very far back in time .
(you may notice bittersweet berries pops out of shell like the picture
I have some native seeds as well?)
STRAWBERRY BUSH (ARBUTUS) GENUS
Wrong family That is Blueberry family (or heath )
people soak it in liquor Arbutus (unedo)
means to eat one only one or something like that
(according to drunken botanist book)
Here is another fruiting shrub/tree that grows here in southern middle TN… mostly in the edges of clearings. I have a few of these in the woods just off my back yard… and along our road.
The berries are green now… but turn red and then somewhat black at the end when they get soft.
I took that pic a couple years ago when they were ripening.
You can eat these… but they do not taste good… just sort of bland a little soapy… if you were starving there is some nutritional value… but the taste is blaugh.
Carolina buckthorn.
Some buckthorn varieties in some locations are very invasive. This is not in TN anyway.
