I'll have to peruse this work when I get home this evening. I am not a botanist, and it's been at least 30 years since I last had a botany course, so...I'm going to have to brush up on my terms to understand what he's describing. For my own satisfaction, I am going to get a sample and walk through his description. As I said before, the pictures I've seen of L. quihoui (as generously offered by Google, possibly erroneous, but all I have)...do not really compare to what I'm seeing. Nevertheless, from what I've read of many of the Ligustrum species, I do understand it's not anything to propagate and/or encourage. Thank you all for your time and help...with my first foray onto the "Name That Plant" forum! Sharon

tallafl - the plants you are familiar with may well be castor beans (Ricinus) which will naturalise but the ones pictured here are definitely Fatsia japonica. They are superficially similar in leaf shape but if you check a few sources you will see they are different.

Personally, I just dont think that VB, or anywhere in that general area along the immediate cost is going to suffer that kind of super killing cold snap. The power of the ocean and the gulf stream is just too great. Even areas of the Chesapeake bay coast are suitable for naturalisation of S. Minors and R. Hystrix, as are areas of the large cities of the mid Atlantic. As I said, and Brooklyngreg has also apparently seen, they are naturalising in the DC area, and not just downtown. In fact, the windmill and the S. Minors and Needle palms in front of the Air and Space museum are doing SO well, and naturalising so much, that it appears ( based on what I saw last summer) that the flower/ seed stalks are now being removed, and there are literally hundreds of volunteers beneath all of these palms. There are now 3 needle palms in the national arboretum that I could count on my trip there last weekend, and it appears that two were offspring of the 50 year old palm, and have been moved to other areas. I do remember there were more than just the big one in the asian valley section, and now there is just the big one by itself again. at the very minimum, S. Minor and R. Hystrix already are ( and probably will) naturlise in the mid Atlantic & DC and quite possibly so will some Windmills. That said, I just dont think that Sabal Palmettos will ever be able to naturalise this far north / indland. Perhaps on the lower coastal areas of the delmarva peninsula but I dont seem them going much further than that. They just are not hardy enough IMHO. In very protected locations sure, they could survive, as does saw palmetto here, but just out in the open, probably not.

Oh, thanks for that. I'm surprised I don't see ladybugs around them because they show up everywhere there are aphids and I just let those be because eventually the aphids go away. I've seen the ladybug larva and took some macro photos last year of one eating aphids. (My kinda fun?) I normally just let all bugs duke it out, but this year it just seems like the whiteflies are everywhere. Last summer I got rid of all the remaining privets that were in the backyard, but I wonder if their larvae survived in the soil? I guess I gotta do some research on whitefly ;)