Tree or shrub with large fuzzy brown flowers: can you identify?

This, perhaps?

Or, perhaps, this?

maybe it’s in here

No, sorry, @whatthefluther, but thanks. The “flowers” look like pom-poms made of something like this.

@cyndihugs…I think you win!!

@whatthefluther—don’t give up…yet… :)

Those are great, @cyndihugs, but nope. They don’t look like flowers at all.

@Jeruba this is a mission…

OK, I’ll go look for more fuzzy balls

smoke bush?

@jonsblond….Sure, pass it this way!

fuzzy ball

Smokebush isn’t it, but it’s much closer, to judge from this picture. Now imagine this with brown puffs on long stalks that extend well out from the body of leaves, and the leaves very dark, so that the whole effect is brown. (Maybe those pink things turn brown later?) This is on the right track.

uhh
i think i’m getting off track

Joshua Tree?

Something like this that has brown fuzzy balls like this?

Nope. The brown fuzzy balls look more like this.

Lynwood?

like this

this
this

No, really—maybe it is a smoke bush or a smoke tree. It is more like this. But all brown, not red or pink or orange at all. Brown as in Crayola burnt umber.

..
…

this?

Well, you guys are working pretty hard, but I wonder if you are looking at my links. The “flowers” are nothing but a spidery webwork of tiny branches, with no body to them at all and no color other than dark brown.

I actually cut a small branch from the tree, but I can’t post a photo of it without creating some kind of account somewhere.

this

I’m going to figure out how to post a picture of the branch I cut.

Here’s a close up of the smoke bush. I have seen some that look more brown than purple. My mind is stuck on this bush. I have wanted one for the past two years but we have no more room in our yard for new plants. When you first described it I imagined this bush immediately. looking forward to your picture!

@Jeruba try photobucket….

Isn’t there anyplace I can post photos without having to register and create an account with personal information in it?

@Jeruba
Are you sure you weren’t smoking bush? :P

Ha ha, @SeventhSense. They were so strange looking that I did wonder if I’d exaggerated them in my imagination. But here is my evidence. The first three shots come from a cellphone camera. Pardon the port-a-potty; there’s a construction site next to them. The rest are closeups of the branch I cut.

The flash and the yellow tablecloth do make it look reddish, but it is still perfectly brown to my eye.

It may well be in one of the families of this order, or…..somebody find a botanist, please…..wtf

@Jeruba type fake information….

Thanks, @cyndihugs. I decided to give Picasa a try. I posted the pix at the link in my last post above.

@Jeruba then I believe that it loooks more like the smoking tree…like what @jonsblond said before…...

Maybe it is. I agree there’s a stronger resemblance than I thought at first. I would love to get a positive ID just to satisfy my curiosity.

@Jeruba :) ...curiosity killed the cat….j/k I would’ve already been in the doctor plant office just to find out the name of that damn tree.

(That’s why cats have nine lives. They can spare a few just checking things out.)

I thought maybe Dr. Plant lived here. If the man who’s doing some work in our yard comes by before this twig shrivels up, I will ask him.

I think it’s a “spirea”

It’s a “smoke tree” or “ghost tree.” We now (a year later) have one growing in our yard.