Bursting-Heart (Euonymus americanus), Mt. Cuba, Hockenville, Delaware every October.  

 

A deciduous bush so modest and thin-boughed you miss it if you don’t know where it is hiding. Verging on straggly, with spectacular fruit and seeds, it is autumn when the couture-coloured fruit opens.  Birds eat the seeds and deer the leaves.  Not poisonous to Sapiens but a very strong laxative.

Found throughout the Piedmont of the Eastern US and into Texas and Ontario. 

(The last photo found on the web and of unknown provenance).