This little (so far) guy has shown up next to some azaleas in my front yard. Somehow I have the feeling that it isn't going to stay small; it looks to me like it will turn into a large shrub or even a tree. Does it look familiar to anyone here?
Thanks!
Patty
p.s. Yes, I know that I haven't cleaned up my azalea since it finished blooming. It's on my to-do list... :-)
Could be a cotoneaster. The berries are often eaten by birds, resulting in a plant springing up a fair distance from the original plant. Cotoneasters vary in size and habit, but can get to be large shrubs. But the evergreen ones are quite ornamental, being smothered in white or pinkish-white flowers which are followed by red berries, which attract birds.
Thanks for the suggestion, Jeff.
BTW, I stupidly forgot to mention that I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area. That might help you and others consider the most likely culprits.
If it is a large shrub, I'm afraid it will have to go. As you may have noticed in the location photo, it's growing up from under my azaleas, and also right next to a coleonema. There isn't room for anything else there! If I had a good spot for it I might try to transplant it, but I'm out of locations for large plants.
Patty
Not one of my areas of strength but it looks like a camelia to me. I doubt cotoneaster. Check google images for both.
D
A volunteer camellia would be wonderful! Although you've got a good point that the leaves look similar, I think the habit of this thing is too spindly to be a camellia. But maybe I'd better not pull it out just yet until I get a better idea of what it plans to do. :-)
Patty
I'm going with Manzanita (Chaparral on the hoof). They have cinnamon colored branches, and slick, glossy leaves. Know those wild fires in southern California? Manzanita. Their seeds have to go through a fire before they can germinate. San Francisco hasn't had a major fire this century, yet. Keep up the good work.
Not just southern California; also the lower parts of the Sierra Nevada. I see a lot of it in Yosemite. I don't think this will turn out to be that; it's already looking too gangly and not red enough. But we'll see...
As for San Francisco, it *can't* have a wildfire because other than the Presidio, Golden Gate Park and a few other small areas, it's all built up. However, there have been plenty of wildfires in surrounding cities, most notably the Oakland firestorm of 1991, which destroyed thousands of homes and killed a couple of dozen people. The main culprit there was eucalyptus. Well, and people who hadn't cleared brush away from their homes-- although once the fire really got going, that wouldn't have mattered.
Patty
If this were in my backyard, I'd suspect glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus), which I had to spend some time this weekend trying to control. The young, fresh shoots along the vegetable garden fence look a bit like your shrub (including the reddish tinge).
But I read farther down that you are in San Francisco Bay area, so I suppose this is unlikely.
My neighborhood is plagued by woody invasives: common and glossy buckthorn, honeysuckle, privet, multiflora rose, white mulberry, Siberian elm, Norway maple and ailanthus (all but the last three are 'planted' by birds). Leave an area unmowed or unweeded and it quickly grows up into a thicket of invasives.
One little check to do on these possibilities - Camellia has a toothed edge to its leaf when you look closely. Cotoneaster doesn't - if you have something that looks like a cotoneaster and it has a toothed leaf edge, it's probably a pyracantha.
You're right about the leaves being toothed, so not a Cotoneaster. But, as Nelson didn't say, "I see no thorns". So it's not a Pyracantha.
Any possibility of it being an Escallonia?
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.