Tree and its berries.
I hate this tree. It drops these hard little red nuts all over the ground and my car. Worse is that the nuts have this wooden shell around it that splinters and gets all over the place. The tree bloomed early on during the summer and its still blooming and dropping crap all over the place
No idea here; but when the real botanists/naturalists/gardeners show up, it would probably be helpful for them to know the geographic area where the tree is located, and whether it’s growing in a more natural or cultivated/landscaped area. (I’m guessing cultivated, given the shot of the seeds in the parking lot.)
and perhaps about how tall it is?
Can you take a picture of an individual leaf?
I’m located in Los Angeles. These trees are in little spaces within our parking lot to provide shade. I don’t know about how natural it grows, but I’m pretty sure nobody goes around watering them. They do that fine most of the year except when it blooms and those damn berries drop everywhere. They are uh…maybe twice the height of a GMC Van, around 15 feet? I’ll try to get a picture of the leaf tomorrow when I have my camera and post it
It looks a bit like mountain ash, but I think mountain ash has softer berries.
The fruit color can vary.
Maybe soapberry?
This page might help to identify the tree. It’s Los Angeles’ street tree selection guide. If you’re seeing that tree in LA, it’s probably on the list.
I’m sure its not chinaberry or soapberry, the pictures in the wiki didn’t look like the berries I’ve seen. I’ll look through the other links though.
I should clarify: I call them “berries” but they are anything but “berry-like”. They are hard, like a nut, with no pulp or juiciness. When you step on them they don’t break open like a peanut, they are really hard, you could catapult them with a rubber band at someone and take out an eye
I think they’re Crape Myrtle trees, and they’ve been growing like mad this summer in the southeast (other side of the country) because it’s been so damn wet. They usually flower once and then seed out, and then they’re done, but they’ve been flowering and seeding pretty much monthly since about April of this year. It’s been crazy - parking lots and streets just covered with the little crunchy nutshells, and the lacy flowers look like ass when they’re all waterlogged and dying in the streets also.
We don’t see the inner pith of the nuts (your red berries) very often because the birds eat them, but since there are so many of them this year, I’ve seen the piths out in the streets also. Usually we just see the outer shells after they fall.
Nope. Not crape myrtle. There’s a website called GardenWeb that has a “ID This Plant” board that can certainly ID it for you.
Its not Crape Myrtle, too flowery. I forgot to mention that the tree is pretty much all green, even when it blooms, there’s no real flower, just strings of those damn berries
Possibly Brazilian Pepper:
Sometimes planted as an ornamental, it is widely regarded as invasive.
It’s not Schinus - the seeds from that are round and quite easily crushed.
I have a chinaberry tree in my back yard in Florida, 40 feet tall now. Messiest tree I ever saw but wonderful for shade. The chinaberrys that drop sound just like what you are talking about. Considered a trash tree here that I should cut down. But I do like its good points. Hate the hard as a rock chinaberrys.
Found it. It’s Erythrina perrieri, or another species in that genus.
ETA: Oops - no, it’s one of the others mentioned on that page - Cupaniopsis anacardioides
Yep, that’s tuckeroo. They’re an invasive weed in the US, so you could probably use that as as leverage to get them removed. On the bright side, the orange bit around the seeds is edible, so you have a reliable food source.