It is an evergreen shrub or small tree reaching 5-9 m tall, with smooth, light gray bark and slender, hairy shoots. The leaves are alternate, ovate to elliptical with a rounded apex and crenate or coarsely serrated margin, 1-4.5 cm long and 1-2 cm broad, glossy dark green above, slightly paler below. The flowers are 5Â5.5 mm diameter, with a white four-lobed corolla. The fruit is a small round or red (occasionally yellow) drupe 4-6 mm diameter containing four pits. It generally occurs in coastal areas in well-drained sandy soils, and can be found on the upper edges of brackish and salt marshes, sandy hammocks, coastal sand dunes, inner-dune depressions, sand hills, maritime forests, nontidal forested wetlands, well-drained forests and pine flatwoods. Brazilian Pepper is a sprawling shrub or small tree, reaching a height of 7-10 m. The branches can be upright, reclining, or nearly vine-like, all on the same plant. The leaves are alternate, 10-22 cm long, pinnately compound with (3-) 5-15 leaflets; the leaflets are roughly oval (lanceolate to elliptical), 3-6 cm long and 2-3.5 cm broad, and have finely toothed margins, an acute to rounded apex and yellowish veins. The leaf rachis between the leaflets is usually (but not invariably) slightly winged. The plant is dioeceous, with small white flowers borne profusely in axillary clusters. The fruit is a small red spherical drupe 4-5 mm diameter, carried in dense clusters of hundreds of berries. There are two varieties: Schinus terebinthifolius var. acutifolius. Leaves to 22 cm, with 7-15 leaflets; fruit pink. Schinus terebinthifolius var. terebinthifolius. Leaves to 17 cm, with 5-13 leaflets; fruit red. Like many other species in the family Anacardiaceae, Brazilian Pepper has an aromatic sap that can cause skin reactions (similar to poison ivy burns) in some sensitive people. Its plastic morphology allows it to thrive in all kinds of ecosystems: from dunes to swamps, where it grows as a quasi-aquatic plant The main difference is the leaves with the Yupon having smaller and darker leaves with not such a pointed end and the Brazilian Pepper has longer, bigger leaves with a lighter color and generally a yellow vein.

The salient point in all the above is that the native, attractive, and beneficial Yaupon holly behaves differently now that fire is supressed than it did before Euro-settlement. We may have reasons to occassionally remove some of it because, after all, it's former controlling factor has been largely eliminated. While I'm in Wisconsin, I've seen what fire suppression has done to large tracts of pine flatwoods in S. Florida. It's a crying shame. Add in the invasive (And non-native) Malaleuca, and you've got an ecological disaster. I think the OP did want to do things that are helpful to birds and other wildlife in her yard. And while I'm no expert on southern US vegetation communities, it sounds like perhaps human activities have helped Yaupon holly more than hurt it, once again with the fire suppression. If one would seek to use herbicides to kill "brush", fall and winter are the best times of year to do the cut/treat method because sap flow is downward and into the roots then, helping to translocate the chemical throughout the plant, thereby killing all of it. Immediately after cutting the stems, glyphosate, triclopyr, or other suitable herbicide is dabbed or painted onto the cut surface. Stronger dilutions of either of these two herbicides should be used for this cut/treat application than are recommended for normal foliar spraying of same. In the case of glyphosate (Roundup) for instance, up to a 50% mix of concentrate in water is called for. But the thing is, with this method, you are using far less chemical because you're just coating that little cut area. It's a good technique, one which I have used many times. +oM

Hey Beth how is your little grey pearl doing? Mine is slowly showing some new growth. I'm giving it Vitamin B1 and a low amount of Eleanor's VF11 to help it. Obviously there's nothing to pinch off to help it focus on roots and vigor. I just realized this is the one area I forgot to mulch... so I will do that later today after work. Any other ideas to give this fickle little guy the best chance? Mine have only been in their new home for about a month so I'm not really expecting anything, just wanting to set them up for success. Have any photos of how yours is doing? Grow, little grey pearl! Grow! Plant 1 Plant 2 Plant 3 Plant 4 On on the positive side, my lettuces are almost ready for harvest after a month in the same beds (they were started earlier)! :)

A month later... little grey pearl is finally leafing out! It must be the alfalfa. It really all happened in the past week. I mulched them all too, which I'm sure helped. I gave 3 alfalfa, but 1 didn't. Can you guess which one? My weirdo dogs love alfalfa (which I just found out), so they ate all the alfalfa in the other beds they could reach, but these were a little too high for them. I wasn't planning on doing alfalfa again because of the mess they made digging around for alfalfa, but maybe I can just in these beds. I can't believe the difference in just a week! My lettuce seems to be taking off even more too! Before alfalfa about a week ago and after alfalfa now. Little grey pearl 1 Little grey pearl 2 Little grey pearl 3 (this is obviously the one with no alfalfa) Little grey pearl 4