I was visiting my sister's house in central Pennsylvania and we came across a few plants and mushrooms in her woods. Can anyone identify these plants for her? The first picture is some type of berry I suppose. It grew close to the ground. The second and third looks like a baby evergreen of some sort, but she said she doesn't think it ever gets much taller than the photos. Thanks for any help.
The first one is partridge berry, Mitchella repens. This is a wonderful native ground-cover, though it seldom grows very thickly. An old custom at Christmas time is to get a small round fishbowl, place some sphagnum moss at the bottom to hold moisture, and fill the rest with partridge berry, which makes a cheerful table decoration with the bright red berries and nicely shaped, deep green leaves. If done carefully, so that the stems stick down into the moist sphagnum moss, the Mitchella will take root, and the whole bunch can be planted out in spring in a shady corner of the garden. The other plant, the Lycopodium, is also called a club moss and is a very primitive plant -- related, I think, to the kind of flora that thrived in the time of the dinosaurs. I believe they may all be poisonous, but I don't expect you will be nibbling on it anyway. We have a taller kind in the woods out back and I've always thought it looks nice -- sort of exotic and always lush-looking, and a bit eerie when you learn more about it.
