This strange little plant, with a woody stem and three-lobed leaves which are red when new and turn green with age, has been popping up in my backyard. Out of curiosity, I googled it, and found it hiding in a forum post on Dave’s Garden: this is Jatropha gossypiifolia, also known as the bellyache bush,…
Tag: Eudicots
Frogfruit
Ah, the lengths to which I have gone in order to write a post entitled “Frogfruit”. This, er, eccentrically-named plant is also called capeweed, matchweed, and turkey tangle fogfruit, probably not by the same people. It is described as “interesting foliage” by the Florida Native Plant Society. The flower has a spherical purple center (a…
Shepherd’s Needles
This small, white, daisy-like flower with white petals and a yellow center made out of smaller, yellow flowers is Bidens alba, a fast-growing wildflower also known as shepherd’s needles, beggarticks, Spanish needles or butterfly needles. Bidens means two-toothed, and describes the twin projections at the top of the plant’s thin, elongated, black, stick-to-clothing seeds. This…
Oxalis Debilis
I originally took the plant this flower was on to be a clover, but now I am slightly smarter and know that plants in the genus Oxalis just happen to have triplet, round leaves that look like those of clover plants, and are not actually clover (Trifolium sp.) at all. I can’t claim to be…