July 6th: New Leaves, Early Blooms, and Ripe Blackberries

The smartweed displays enigmatic pink buds.

Smartweed shows new leaves developing while the bud-clusters form below.

A lot of similar lobed leaves are growing; these are ragweed.

This is a young burdock plant.

The black raspberry is already full of ripe fruit. I have arrived too late to chronicle the earliest part of this story.

A flower of the wild morning glory, also known as bindweed, appears entirely white, although later blooms show a delicate tinge of pink.

This delicate white flower cluster is an early stage of what will later develop into a long and heavy cluster of berries.

I called this plant false hops when I first saw it, as it seemed to have some of the habit of that vine. There is some hint here that the leaf shape is variable. Later, this becomes much more evident, and I was able to identify this as a mulberry.

This is a plant that I am calling fireworks weed, because the tiny white flowers appear like the white sparkles of fire in some fireworks that shoot out thin arms from the initial bang. I don't know the proper name of this plant. Do you?

Fireworks weed plant

This spiked bug is likely to be the immature form of the female Harlequin beetle.