Poncirus trifoliate 'Flying Dragon', also known as trifoliate orange or Japanese bitter orange is a close relative of citrus trees. It's a deciduous or semi-deciduous tree native to Chine. Leaves are trifoliate, and flowers are white, simple and often fragrant. It bears inedible fruits that look like small citrus fruits. It has gorgeous green contorted branches with lots of nice pointy green thorns. One has grown in my parking strip for several years but this is the first year that it's produced fruit! Hooray. The gorgeous green thorns and contorted branches were reason enough for me to grow this awesome plant but the fruit is such a welcome surprise!
For some far better pictures of this cool plant look here. On the day I took these, it was sunny and I was too excited at finding them to hold the camera still.
The second surprise was this noid euonymus that I planted in a parking strip to provide evergreen color. Just the other day, I went out and saw little bits of orange sticking out from under the branches.
Surprise, it was wearomg brightly colored seeds typical of the euonymus clan, something that I wasn't aware that it would do.
Speaking of brightly colored seeds, look at these belonging to Iris foetidissima. The appearance of this iris's flowers in the summer is often overlooked as they are quite subtle. The seeds make up for the shyness of the flowers by daring you not to notice their brassy orange performance which lasts into winter if the birds don't eat them first.
Not really a surprise but it's always a joy to see them!
Happy new week all and may it be filled with only good surprises for us all!