Sea Grapes or What?

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When I walked to the beach last night, I noticed two kinds of plants or shrubs growing next to each other. The one plant or shrub I always called sea grapes. It is a shrub that grows on or by the sand dunes. Obviously it loves the salt air. Birds love the berries growing on these shrubs. This is the first picture above.

I’m not sure what the other plant is called. I’ve included a couple of pictures of it. Is this mystery plant also a type of sea grape or does it have another name?

When I took biology in high school, it was not my strongest subject. There were just too many strange sounding names for me to remember and keep straight. Some people can walk in a forest and identify every tree by its leaf. I can’t remember much beyond an oak and a maple.

If anyone reading this blog knows the name of the mystery plant, please feel free to identify it in a comment.

Beach Rainbow

There is a named tropical storm, Bret, swirling off the east coast of Florida. On Sunday it brought little cells of rain ashore a few times in the Indialantic area.

Late Sunday afternoon my wife and I walked down to take a look at the ocean. A day before the ocean had been fairly calm and the water very clean. A northeasterly wind usually clears the ocean water here. This evening, however, the water was on the rough side and the water had a brownish tint to it as the first picture shows.

As my wife and I were watching the ocean, it began to lightly rain. Then a rainbow appeared towards the horizon. At one point, there was actually a double rainbow.

I only carry an older, small pocket-sized camera to the beach, so I don't get the shots a DLSR would get, but I did get a couple pictures of the rainbow. One is taken looking towards the southeast side and the other looking toward the northeast.

Fortunately for us, Bret will only be a tropical storm and it will be moving away from Florida.

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