Paliurus hemsleyanus...a curious small tree from China (Seurat's take)

I keep finding plants in China Valley that amaze me. Well maybe not amaze, but these are weird fruits! Hey, I see them described as drupes in various sources. I have my doubts; the drupes we are most familiar with are peaches, almonds, nectarines, etc. A drupe has a leathery covering (exocarp), a fleshy middle (mesocarp), and a hard interior (endocarp) surrounding one seed. These umbrellas are not typical drupes but they are cool!

The plant itself is a medium sized tree growing slightly up from the base of a north-facing slope. Its in the Rhamnaceae and is supposed to have stipular spines. I missed them. Krussman (Cultivated Broad Leaved Trees and Shrubs) observes with an exclamation point that they are sometimes absent??? At lunch I interogated George Waters and he mentioned spines on the trunk itself. This will bear more investigation. I guess I will eventually get to know the curious flora of China Valley.

Tradescantia spp. ?

I'm pretty sure the top one is T. ohioensis and the bottom one is T. virginina. {If you click on the pictures you can see glabrous white peduncles on the (?) T. ohioensis, and clearly hairy sepals and hairy pigmented peduncles on the other.} I collected the atypical pink form from a gas station in northern Georgia two years ago. Though it clearly is flowering at the same time as the blue (virginiana?), in general it is later; it's covered with flowers now and there is only a smattering of color left on the others, which I have, in fact, mostly cut back.

These are pretty nice plants if you are ruthless; when they come to the end of their blooming period and lodge (collapse in splayed ugliness) just cut them back to 2-3". They'll regrow and flower again within a month or so. Failing that severe pruning, they will lay there reproaching you with their ugliness as they gradually resprout from various places and eventually rebloom anyway. They're nice for a touch of color in partial shade in an informal area.