Plant ID help- IL natives and established ornamentals

We recently moved into this house and there are quite a few native plants running rampant as well as the old ornamentals that were planted when the house was built. I would love some help IDing them!

Plant #1:




Plant #2:


Plant #3:


Plant #4:


Plant #5:


Plant #6


Thank you!!!

I have assumed #5 is hibiscus, but my dad disagreed.

#3 - solanum niger or black nightshade, a weed related to tomatoes, potentially toxic if eaten

#4 - morus alba - common mulberry, tree that grows everywhere around here, zone 5 indiana, could mess up the fence its growing by
birds make some nasty poop when eating the berries, will stain car paint, sidewalk etc. Chickens would love it.

#5 - hibiscus, hardy variety, possibly rose of sharon

#6 - phytolacca americana - polk weed, some people eat small early leaves, but generaly thought of as bad for you.

#1 - ?? - possibly service berry but the birds should have eaten the berries. Flowering crab?

#2 - ?? - crab apple

Not sure about the first two. Probably a type of flowering tree used for landscaping around houses. Any landscapers out there?

Pete

Thank you Pete!! VERY helpful!

Someone in another thread figured out #1... it's a Callery Pear. Not edible.

#2... upon further searching, you might be right. I always thought crab apple had larger fruit and I've only ever seen green crab apples, but after googling it I'm seeing that the Japanese crab apple (Malus floribunda) produces red fruits that are only 1cm in diameter. That could be right. The leaves certainly look like they are in the rose family. Huh... well, those would technically be edible then!

I thought #3 was nightshade... there is another similar one growing nearby with red berries and purple flowers- also nightshade?

#4... Oh, good! I was wondering if that's what it was and was actually thinking of planting a mulberry tree in my yard, but not under the fence! LOL!

#5... Ha! I'll have to tell my dad. I mean, what else could that be?

#6... polk weed- never heard of it before, so thank you!

# 5 is definitely hibiscus, thats a classic kind and color variety.
you can eat all parts of it, including those beautiful flowers.
used a lot in tea blends.

# 3 is some kind of poisonous nightshade. same with the purple flowered one red berry.

2 is defintely some kind of apple. maybe its just...not doing that well. sometimes ok apple trees will produce poor quality fruit if they get ignored for too long. or maybe its not a great kind. prune it back later in the year, or whenever, and cultivate the soil around it some to help water flow get down to the roots. maybe it will produce better fruit, or maybe its just "crab apple" or not a great variety.

cool that you figured out what that tree is. its really a beautiful tree.
like a wild pear? some kind of old pear variety? or a kind of hardy pear. that would be neat if you get it grafted =)

I was thinking that one was a flowering crab apple. Some do have red fruit. I have one that does, but I can't remember if it's the Hopa or the Dolgo.

Polk weed leaves are edible when young but should be cooked with two changes of water. They are quite bitter.

#2 Could it be a Hawthorne? Many varieties.

I don't think it's Hawthorn as the leaves don't look right for that. The leaves look very much like they are in the rose family. Here are some closer up pics of the fruit:

Hawthorn is in the Rose family.

Note the 4 types of hawthorns all have many different types of leaves. That said, Most of the fruit I've seen has those thingies at the base.

Thanks Cj! When I googled Hawthorn all I saw was the bottom right and those leaves are markedly different. But the fruits do still look different. They really do look like little apples now that I've looked closely at them.

I eat black nightshade and find it delicious, never been sick from it. I've heard of others eating it too.

If the fruit is perfectly ripe it is delicious and not poisonous. Burpee developed a variety which he called Wonderberry. I have seeds for it but am not growing it this year. I have also heard that people in central America, Africa and India use closely related species as pot herbs, but I'd research that more before using them that way.

They are all edible and most of them grow on my land, I refer you to a website with photo, identification tips and recipe. The site is in french but you can find the plant with the pictures then translate it with google. The guy who made this website, made a research for native plants, fruits and vegetables. http://liafaydjam.blogspot.ca/

#6 - Poke Weed, or just Poke

This excerpt is from a book I have called "Edible Wild Plants: Eastern Central North America" by Lee Allen Peterson.

"Young shoots only.

A course, widely branched, weedy plant with large leaves and smooth reddish stems. Flower clusters long-stalked, often paired with leaves; flowers with five greenish white petal-like sepals. Fruiting clusters drooping; berries glossy, purple-black with red stems ripening in Autumn. 4-10 ft.

Where found: Roadsides, Cultivated Fields, Waste Places. Minn to Maine and south.
Flowers: June-Oct.

Use: Asparagus, cooked green, pickle. The young shoots - up to 6 in. - or just the leafy tips, are excellent boiled for 20-30 mins. (until tender) in at least two changes of water. The peeled shoots can be boiled for 15 mins in several changes of water and pickled in hot vinegar.

Warning!: Root, seeds, and mature stems and leaves are dangerously poisonous. Be VERY careful not to include part of the root when collecting the shoots, and peel or discard ANY shoots tinged with red."

I would personally consider this a famine food, along with rose petals, acorns, and bugs.

#1 Kinda looks like Pyrus - some ornamental type (Ornamental Pear). Does it have airy white flowers in spring? Do the fruits get larger or change color? A picture of the whole tree, so that the form/shape of its top might help.

You can eradicate that mulberry on your fence... but you have to dig deep. I had one about that size growing out of the foundation of my house, when I bought it. Someone had just kept cutting the top off, and it proceeded to grow thicker instead. I started digging about 3 foot out from my foundation, and everywhere I ran into a root, I would clean the dirt from around the root and cut it with a sawz-all or hand saw. When I thought I had got most of them, I tried to pull it out with the truck. That failed, so I went back to digging and hand cutting. Ended up with a 3' deep hole, but I pulled the sucker out and it hasn't returned!

I think 1 is a bradford pare 2 is crab apple 3 not sure but the leaves resemble a pepper plants. So I could see it being a nightshade 4 mulberry 5 rose of sharon and 6 polk weed.

this thread just got bumped a bit by someone, so anywho thought i would respond to the earlier discussion...

the solanum pictured above is one of the nightshades, and although a couple members of that family are classified as "poisonous", my understanding is they are only mildly poisonous. another words, stomache ache, not more dire consequences, from eating large quantities.

although many people exhibit a greater sensitivity to all solanums, including tomatoes.

there are several edible varieties, the american wild nightshade is edible, and even i have found some are quite good. they must be perfectly ripe, and if you are daring i suggesting trying only a couple before seeing your reaction to them. when feeling fairly certain of ID i have eaten small amounts of these at a time, they are common weeds to find. however by most people's accounts even those wild american nightshades/ wonder berries/ sun berries/garden hukleberry are classified as "poisonous".

one member of this family in particular is why the family earns this rep, being more toxic than most. i suppose i leave it up to you to experiment, if you are daring.

ditto, all of that - on poke weed, a very common wild edible of the south, pictured in the OP. it is technically an edible, but also has some toxic qualities, particularly if you do not prepare it correctly. however that is also a strong medicinal, the line there between toxic and medicinal is blurred. but for eating, you must harvest at the right time and prepare it in the correct way, then it is edible.

and here since i got curious enough to talk to google about nightshades ---->

http://www.eattheweeds.com/american-nightshade-a-much-maligned-edible/