This unmarked, furry, ground hugging vine is at the Getty Villa in Malibu. Can someone I.D. it for me please?
A great picture I agree, but would be just as great on screen if it was, say only 1100 pixels wide instead of 2500 and file size almost 2 Mb. I have a very fast connection but it's still irritating the time taken for pics like this to load - and there seem to be more and more of them lately. Most photo editing applications allow resizing and resaving. I attach an example below, a pic I took a week ago in my neighborhood. The original file size was 3.07 Mb, pixel size 3072 x 2048. It took me less than one minute in Photoshop Elements to resize it to 1100 x 733 pixels and resave with little compression to file size 350 Kb. I still have the original full-sized file intact. I hope this isn't too much of a sour note, but rather a helpful hint. And by the way, can anyone identify the tree in my picture?
As my answer, I attach a picture of a young tree taken in a wild forest of Japan. Young individuals of this species look a bit different from mature ones. I think the genus is right at least.
Pedalada, I suspect we have the same genus at least. I did not know the juvenile growths had spines like this, but one of my books confirms it. In recent classifications it has a connection with willows.
Xylosma japonicum, X. congestum, X. racemosum, X. senticosum (family: Salicaceae, formerly Flacourtiaceae) Several botanical names are applied to what we call "Kusudoige" in Japanese. illustration from http://www.lib.pref.fukuoka.jp/tosho/imagesl/sh-m04l.jpg : http://www.lib.pref.fukuoka.jp/tosho/imagesl/sh088l.jpg I hope I'm not on the wrong track.
Pedalada, you are on the right track! This shrub/tree was promoted as a hedge or screen plant around 30 years ago in Australia, as Xylosma senticosa. Walking past a large specimen in inner-suburban Sydney a few weeks ago, I saw flowers for the first time and couldn't wait to photograph them (hanging over the street). Chasing the name up with Google I got the impression that X. congesta is the name in use now, though could not find any good botanical study. Just to get super-pedantic, the name Xylosma is correctly treated as of feminine gender. As Stearn's Botanical Latin points out, while most Greek-derived names ending in -ma (-sperma, -stoma, -stigma, etc) are neuter, there are some exceptions such as -osma and -cnema that are feminine. So the epithets japonicum, congestum, racemosum, senticosum should all be corrected to japonica, congesta, racemosa, senticosa -- ignored by most references but supported at this website: http://www.bgbm.org/scripts/asp/IAPT/ncugentry.asp?name=Xylosma I loved your link to the original illustration in Siebold & Zuccarini. It's good the way more and more libraries and botanical institutions are making these classic references available online.
