Madeline (Giles) DeJournett is the Advance writer for the North Stoddard Countian. A retired high school English/history teacher, she spent 32 years teaching in 5 schools in Missouri and Alaska. These days, she lives quietly with a menagerie of wild and domestic animals on 52 secluded acres in the remote Tillman hills south of Advance. She graduated from Dexter High School in 1960 and Southeast Missouri State in 1964. She can be contacted at advancensc@sbcglobal.net.

Mystery plant

Posted Thursday, April 21, 2011, at 7:18 AM

I saw this beautiful bush in a trailer park in Ft. Meyers, Florida a few months ago. The leaves look like a sheffelera--or umbrella plant--but I've never seen a bloom like this.

My theory is that it IS a sheffelera, and the reason that we here in the frozen north don't see the berry clusters is that the plant doesn't really flourish up here.

I remember the first sheffelera I ever owned. It was a gift, planted in a coffee cup. Little did I know just how big it would get! By the time we sold the house we had built in Alaska and were ready to move back to Missouri, my sheffelera was over six feet tall. I sold it to the people who bought the house.

This year I'm wishing I hadn't let all my summer porch plants die off. Maybe I'll just rekindle my green surroundings. When winter comes, I'll figure out what to do with them.

Green thumb readers--do think you think this plant is a sheffelera or some other exotic variety of greenery?

From the wild, exotic hills of Tillman, Missouri, this is your rural reporter, signing off on a beautiful, DRY spring morning.

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Yep, it's a blooming sheffelera! I had one when I lived in Phoenix, but it had a white bloom. I found a picture of one online so you could see another picture.

http://plantsarethestrangestpeople.blogspot.com/2010/11/random-plant-event-schef...

-- Posted by lovebooks on Thu, Apr 21, 2011, at 7:50 AM
Thanks for the link, lovebooks. The information still seems to indicate that flowers on sheffeleras are uncommon--and they're white!

Interesting!

-- Posted by Dexterite1 on Thu, Apr 21, 2011, at 8:20 PM

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