If you look closely at the picture above, you will see a bit of orange at the center of this featured plant. That should tell you that this is something that Pablo planted deliberately this spring. (If I had planted it in an earlier spring, that orange would be faded.) But what is it? Well, you could forage though all of my springtime posts to see what Pablo ordered from the Missouri Department of Conservation, or I could just tell you. We'll start with this. We planted 25 of them, and Libby remarked at the time that the twigs we received looked dried out and dead. On subsequent visits when we checked our plantings, the few leaves that had come out at the end of the sticks had dried and fallen off. Eventually, we stopped visiting the dessicated twigs and vowed never to order that plant again. On our latest trip to Roundrock, we decided to see how our wild plum plantings were doing. Having been planted at the same time, they had started out great, and we were looking for encouragement. To get the plums, we had to pass these plants. This was the first one I saw, and I dismissed it as just some random weed coming up where we had made our hopeful planting.  Yet nearby where we had planted another, this same plant was coming up. In fact, in all of the places we could find where we had planted this, this same plant was growing from the ground. Even Pablo can figure this one out. The plants we had stuck in the ground with so much hope and whispered kind words to had not died. They were simply sprouting from their roots, looking happy and pleased to be in our woods. It's almost anticlimactic now to tell you that these are the beautyberries we had planted. They've done so well that I intend to order more next year, assuming they're on offer. As for the plums, well, they're all still alive, but something is eating the leaves. I don't know what can be done about that. We can't fumigate the whole forest. But hope lingers. Missouri calendar:

• Wild black cherries ripen.

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