(https://www.forestryforum.com/images/YaBBImages/userpics/ID28b.jpg)
American Beauty Berry
Yep, It was a topic of discription a few days ago and I just happened up on a pretty speciman to show off. These are being planted in home landscapes now . It amazed me to find the million dollar houses around here with them growing in the flower beds.
There are several good sights with pictures on the web but few with any meaningful verbage. It is suggested to grow Beauty Berry for bird food and then in the same article describes how the birds don't eat it as readily as they do Dahoon and Yaupon.
Callicarpa americana)
http://www.streetside.com/plants/floridata/ref/c/callicar.htm
http://www.nativesoftexas.com/bberry.html
Here in Texas it is alternatively named Spanish or French Mulberry, has to do with our heritage. It has another use that the east Texans found handy, it apparently has some ability to repel ticks and red bugs (chiggers), so we routinely break off a chunk and whip our britches legs with it to remove the critters. No transfer of new ones from the plant.
But that is old history, with the spread of the imported fire ant, ticks in my part of the world could be considered endangered. Where we could get a good load of ticks in a days time to the point of taking a chlorox bath and a "kind" family member to check those parts you cannot see, now getting a tick every so often, last year less than a dozen, or less than one a month. Red bugs another question. Still can get wrapped up with them, but not as often as before. Army worms down as well.
Those birds ain't stupid ya know....Heck! I'd take yaupon over the beauty berry any day ???
Hey Don, how bout if I send you some of our black flies? They take chunks when they bite but are about 1/2 the size of a house fly. I looked at one under a microscope once and found that a black fly is only a set of jaws with wings. :o When I was down in Florida recently I was reminded how much I detest the sandfly (noseeums). They literally ate me up! If you're running low on ticks, let me know and I'll send you a bunch. I know Tom can send you a bunch from his place too. 8)
Thanks, Charlie, but no thanks. We got enough of the biting type of critters, and plants, to keep us active. After all this rain, we seem to have an unusual number of mosquitos. Bigger and better than usual. My neighbors 10 year old boy was playing in the back yard, when two mosquitos came after him. He dove under a wash pot, and the skitters stuck their beaks through the pot to get to him. He hammered over the beaks, and the bugs flew off with the pot!
No wonder Texans see more UFO's per capita then Michigan. In Michigan they would have carried the kid away, thus clearly being indentifiable.
The Navy makes running passes at the saltwater marshes here and uses the mosquitoes for Anti-aircraft practice. It works real good........saves a lot of money on drones and other flying targets and doesn't seem to hurt the mosquito population either. On occasion a mosquito will attack a ship but Navy casualties have been minor.