More red berries! This shrub is located on the north side of the Reston Assocation path that crosses underneath Wiehle Ave just south of its southern intersection with North Shore Drive. This location is west of Wiehle Ave and south of the end of Putter Lane.
A closer look at some of the berries. Note the serrated leaf edges, the opposite arrangement of the leaves (more noticeable in the previous image), the prominent veining, and the fuzz on the twigs bearing the red berries. This appears to me to be a viburnum, and more specifically a linden viburnum (
Viburnum dilatatum). Compare the
Virginia Tech fact sheet.
On the west side of Wiehle Avenue just north of its southern intersection with North Shore Drive is this clump of bamboo (with a young holly shrub in the foreground).
A closer look into the bamboo patch, with one of the characteristically jointed bamboo "poles" (stems or culms) visible in the background. I have found it difficult finding definitive taxonomic guidance on the various bamboo species; however, it appears that the most commonly invasive bamboo in Fairfax County is golden bamboo (
Phyllostachys aurea). See this
indictment. Reston's
list of 8 forbidden species merely lists "exotic bamboo", without specifying the species.
Now for a more pleasant exotic species. This tree, with its spectacular symmetric cone shape, is found at the end of the first cul-de-sac on the south side of Fairway Drive west of Wiehle Avenue.
Note the delicate and lusciously green needles that form two ranks and are arranged like a bipinnately compound leaf. These needles are in fact deciduous, and the tree is dawn redwood (
Metasequoia glyptostroboides). Compare the
Virginia Tech fact sheet, as well as this
Wikipedia article and this
information on a North Carolina plantation.
Male cones hanging in stringers from the end of the branches. I find it fascinating that this species was unknown until found in the 1940s surviving in one isolated forest in Sichuan province, China, and from there has been propagated across both China and the U.S. over the past 60 years, thereby ensuring its survival (closely related but now extinct species dominated North American forest covers 10 million years ago, and somewhat more distantly related species are the coastal redwood and giant sequoia of California and the bald cypress).
The base of the trunk of this tree, with both dark green English ivy (
Hedera helix - one of Reston's
8 prohibited species; compare the
Virginia Tech fact sheet) and lighter green Virginia creeper (
Parthenocissus quinquefolia) ascending.
