Ok. I admit it. I'm stumped. We're stumped. We took a simple nature walk around our neighborhood, and collected a few specimens to identify at home. The kids already knew a couple, and had fun looking up the specifics of the others. But, see that big ol' leaf on the left? It's got me grinding my teeth and scratching my head. Hannah says she remembers that it was from a plant that had white berries. I searched and searched. The closest I can find is the Snowberry plant, and that is certainly plausible. But the one thing that has me befuddled is that the bottom area where the stem is, is quite flat rather than rounded. I have looked at thousands of images of New England plant leaves tonight, and not a one of them has that flattened bottom. They're all rounded. Now, we could, of course have the only flat bottomed untoothed hydrangea leaf on earth. LOL. Or.... it could be the one flat bottomed Snowberry leaf on the plant. But I sure would be happy to know what plant that is. I'd love to teach the kids not to give up on finding the answer to something. Sometimes you've just got to put it out there to the universe, and hope someone has one in their backyard, you know? So... if you've seen this leaf, and you'd feel so inclined as to leave a comment, I would sure appreciate that. :)
UPDATE!
My compadres on facebook gave me some good suggestions and leads. I went back to the scene of the discovery, and took more photos of the plant this leaf came from...
A friend suggested that they look like Japanese Knotweed or False Bamboo. I looked them up, and "By George, I think he's got it!!!" Looks like the images and sounds like the description of Japanese Knotweed. Our little nature walk around the block turned into quite the "mystery plant investigation". I must say, my fondest discovery was that where technology failed, good ol' connections with other human beings and their vast storehouse of knowledge led us to the anwer. :)
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