Going once, going twice, going invasive!

I just read an interesting article (see citation at bottom) that describes various ways that species become invasive, and if invasive is really a good word to use.   Often there is a lag time between the first introduction until a species becomes common, overwhelming, and invasive.  The author argues that this lag time often is not a result of a biological process, but simply a continuous time for more introductions of the species to the area and human-mediated dispersal. Here are some quotes, laying out this theory:

"A single initial introduction may act as exclusive founding population. In the British Isles, all populations of the highly invasive Japanese knotweed Fallopia japonica are supposed to descend from one single clone probably introduced in 1848."

"Most frequently, however, successful non-native species are introduced repeatedly and often discontinuously over long periods from one or more original ranges into a new one."

"The success of these species was, in terms of naturalisation, poor with 7.4% naturalised. In contrast, 41.2% of the deliberately introduced taxa achieved naturalisation." {this is from a 1912 study in France}

Note the comment at the end, that deliberately introduced and spread taxa are the ones that become invasive, much more so than the accidentals.  The article describes the situation in Germany, but I think you would have a similar case in the US.  Some of our worst weeds were deliberately spread by humans and promoted as solutions to problems (kudzu for soil erosion and multiflora roses for hedges, for example).  Very interesting read.

Article, source for quotes: Kowarik, Ingo. 2003. Human agency in biological invasions: secondary releases foster naturalisation and population expansion of alien plant species. Biological Invasions 5: 293–312, 2003.

Species: Kudzu, Pueraria lobata, Fabaceae.

From the blogs: The IKEA Maskros Chandelier

The Design Ties blog is writing about the popular lamp from IKEA that was inspired by a dandelion ('maskros' in Swedish) in fruit, with all the little feathery parasols ready to blow off.  Click on this link to the blog, and check out the various photos.  Pretty nice!

[Species: Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, Asteraceae]

Some plants have really unusual features.  This edible crop and weed, purslane (Portulaca oleracea), has capsular fruits with a top that 'pops off', so that the seeds are then exposed to weather and wind.  This particular type of capsule is called circumscissile, and for this particular plant is could be that the part that is left below with the seeds functions as a splash cup.  I don't know, but it is not unlikely.  The little black seeds would then splash out of the cup when a raindrop hits the cup, and disperse further than just normal falling down out of the capsule. (Note to myself, research needed!)   

Splash cups are not that common, but also occur in the bird's-nest fungus. While looking up purslane I found out that one plant can produce more than 240 000 seeds per season.  Well, it is good it is edible then.

You can read more about purslane and this photo here. 

Photo credit (c) Arjo Vanderjagt on Flickr

Species: purslane (Portulaca oleracea, Portulacaceae)

Company named after weeds: Cirsium Garden Design, UK

Cirsium is the name of a garden design company in Hook, Hampshire (UK), and also the Latin genus name for one of the thistle genera. I love their logo - go to their website to see a larger version.

Genus: thistles, Cirsium, Asteraceae

Interior design: Cow Parsley wallpaper by Vanillaprint

Cow parsley is a weed of Europe, and much loved (at least in Sweden) for its detailed, airy white flower heads in early June. By late fall the fruits are still standing on the dry stalks and they often last partly through the winter. 

It is in the same family as the American Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota), which is the same species as carrot.

The interior design company Vanillawood in Portland, Oregon, USA, made a wallpaper featuring this species.  It comes in many colors, take a look here. Lovely pattern!

I don't know how or why this company settled on this species, but cow parsley is becoming an invasive weed here in the US. It is classified as a "Class B noxious weed" in Washington State, USA, and is widespread as an invasive weed both in both northwestern and northeastern USA.  It is mostly called wild chervil in the US.

It is a bit disturbing that a lovely wildflower plant you remember from your childhood and that you strongly associate with long Swedish summer nights are suddenly horrible weeds in another country.  The same thing happened to purple loosestrife, which was one of my favorite flowers on the Baltic seashores.  Here in the US it also is a horrible invasive species. 

Image (c) Vanillawood, used with permission.

Species: Anthriscus sylvestris, Apiaceae, cow parsley, wild chervil

Taste testing: Fentiman's soda - Dandelion and Burdock

Fentiman's is a UK brand of sodas licensed to be made in the US. This Dandelion & Burdock version includes extracts from two weeds: dandelion root and burdock root.  It also includes ginger, anise, and pear. I wrote about this weedy product earlier, but here is a more scientific investigation.

I had a little taste test of this carbonated drink that I found (surprisingly!) in a local supermarket.  I asked over 20 students and family members to write down their thoughts on the smell and the taste and if they liked it or not.  The result?  Overwhelming positive!  Funny enough, many people said it smelled like bubblegum, and in particular Bazooka Bubblegum.  I better look that up, maybe there is some burdock in the Bazooka brand.



Comments from tasters:

Tastes like bubble gum. Tastes exactly how it smells

Strong smell – mellow taste – almost like cream soda/root beer – I liked it

Harsh nose – alcoholic almost – light on palate – doesn’t hold carbonization – flat – does not linger on palate

Delicious! Smells a little strange, but tastes great!

It’s good. A cross between root beer and bubble gum. And perfectly carbonated.

Love it! I bet it would be good with vanilla ice cream, or by itself as an after-dinner treat.  It has a nice fragrance.

Smell – sweet, like cream soda. Taste – light, not overpowering sweet, bazooka bubblegum aftertaste, but scant.  Overall quite delicious.

It tastes like black licorice, smells like a bad cough medicine.

A grassy licorice taste at first, a sweet aftertaste.

Tastes like Dr. Pepper, mixed with Jaegermeister (I assume it is the herbal qualities I am picking up). There is a slightly cherry or plum sort of undertone that probably gives me the Dr. Pepper. Also reminds me a bit of Ricola throat drops. These are all positive, however. It’s more refreshing than super sweet fruit sodas and colas.

I think it tasted good, light and fresh. Just like cola with some herbs.

Taste like one of the traditional Chinese medicines, a little bitter for the first 5 seconds and then coming with really good sweet taste. I like it!

I found this to be nice and light, less sugar than other sodas.

Overall, not bad, but needs more sugar. Nice texture and taste; aftertaste like bubblegum.

I liked it, but didn’t love it… It’s a bit too sweet for my taste. And very ‘fruity’. I would drink it with no effort, but it is not my favorite drink in the world.

Not enough flavor for a soda.  Maybe more sugar, it lacks a flavor kick.

It is really sweet. I don’t really like it, it is too sweet.

It kind of reminds me of cough syrup.

Weird aftertaste. Reminds me of Peptobismol, but I like that, this is all right. Smell like old-fashioned Amish candy.

It is the best tasting soda I have ever tasted in my life.

It smells good. It tastes good, just too sweet.

There is clove in this smell.

Smell – I really don’t like it, some old weird candy.

Smells like Bazzooka bubble gum.

Species: Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, Asteraceae
Species: Burdock, Arctium, Asteraceae

Seeds Flying Away

Seeds Flying Away, a photo by Lauren Tucker Photography on Flickr.

A photo showing the very efficient fruit dispersal by wind of thistles, which are relatives of dandelions. Both are the sunflower family, Asteraceae.

Art design: Cattails and reeds as fabric print

Swedish designed and printed fabric from Ljungbergs Textiltryck, called 'Kaveldun' (=cat tail). Lovely. Cat tails (Typha) is in its own family, and reed is Phragmites in the grass family.  Both are wetland plants, and common both in Europe and North America. I love the cigar-shaped dense flower heads of the cat tails. Phragmites is among the most widespread plants in the world. There is some artistic freedom in this pattern; in real life cat tail stems never branch as shown in this print.

Species: cattail, Typha sp., Typhaceae
Species: common reed, Phragmites sp., Poaceae

Image © Ljungbergs Textiltryck, 'Kaveldun'

In the news: Survival of agricultural weeds

A press release on ScienceDaily summarizes a new study comparing how long seeds from two species of weeds (Chenopodium and Amaranthus, Amaranthaceae) survive under conventional vs. organic farming:

Organic and conventional farming methods compete to eliminate weed seeds in soil

The answer: no strong conclusion either way, the result is mixed. Here is the original article: LINK (doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1614/WS-D-10-00142.1)

A fence won't stop a weed

Here are some stems of poison ivy, climbing up a chain link fence at Rutgers University campus, without any problems at all. In fact, I bet the plant will win over the fence in a few years.

Species: poison ivy, Toxicodendron radicans, Anacardiaceae
[photo by Vilseskogen on Flickr, Creative Commons]

Weedy moss on a brick building

Brick wall mosses, photo by Vilseskogen on Flickr (Creative Commons license)

Mosses can be weeds too.  I remember reading that the best way to get rid of moss is to scrub the bricks with bleach with an old toothpaste.  Who would do that?  Remove this gorgeous beauty?

Art design: Dandelion wall paper by MissPrint

There is a very cool wall paper design based on a mobile of dandelions (Taraxacum vulgare, Asteraceae) designed and sold by MissPrint, a small UK company in several colors.
[image used with permission from MissPrint]

Need to see how a dandelion looks like?  Here!
This design actually looks a bit more like Queen Anne's lace when you see the fruiting heads side-ways, but the design is named 'Dandelion' so that the designer's creative freedom showing off.
Species: dandelion, Taraxacum vulgare, Asteraceae

Design: Lamp "Maskros" (= dandelion) from IKEA

 

Nice!

[photo by Vilseskogen, Flickr, Creative Commons]
Species: dandelion, Taraxacum vulgare, Asteraceae

Species: Multi-flora rose

One of the worst weeds in New Jersey is this gorgeous red-fruited rose, multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora).  It spreads its thorny, fast-growing, end-rooting branches like wild fire in the open meadows, and is hard to kill off.  But the fruits, true but small rosehips, are gorgeous in the December sun. This species is a horrible invasive in the US and originally from Asia.

Species: multiflora rose, Rosa multiflora, Rosaceae
[image by Vilseskogen on Flickr, Creative Commons]

Goats love weeds...

They love them so much they eat them to death, and this is being used in Los Angeles (California, USA) by Environmental Land Management who rent out weed-cleaning goats.  You can read the story here in New York Times.

Drought-tolerant gardening in Austin, TX

Instead of pouring rare water over lawns of grasses not adapted to heat and drought, plant a prairie of native plants that you let go brown in the summer drought. A great article on projects like this in Austin, TX was recently published in The New York Times.  A short excerpt, showing how perception is strongly linked to knowledge (or lack thereof) for many people:

“People were asking: ‘What are all these weeds? Why aren’t we mowing?’ ” Mr. Simmons said. So he started giving talks to the community, and his team gave tours and handed out educational material.
“Six months later, when we decided to mow, to make the wildflowers show up better in the spring, we got all these calls saying, ‘Why are you mowing down our prairie?’ ” he said.

Product: Weed trimmer toy

The toy that creates people with OCD gardening syndrome - a Home Depot toy weed trimmer.  It is only $9.98, and a great buy of plastic made in China, I bet.  Give the kid a real metal shovel instead to dig up some thistle roots. Let kids do real things, and learn about the real outdoors.  But maybe that is too much to hope for, when there are so many gadget-happy parents in the US.

Not all weeds are edible or even palatable...

Smokey The Cat tried out some leaves of the yellow foxtail (Setaria, Poaceae), but spat them out.  When it comes to edible plants, it is important to remember that some things that are edible do not really taste good, and that some things that taste good actually are toxic.  So, don't go by the taste only.

[photo by Vilseskogen, Flickr, Creative Commons]

How to identify weed species

To be able to identify plants to a certain species, you will need a good flora, a handlens, and a little patience while you learn the botanical terminology that describes plant features (stipules, petiole, sepals, and things like that). 

Some plant groups are a lot harder to identify than others, like the Polygonum genus in the rhubarb family Polygonaceae for example (see photo above). For them you will have to look at tiny hairs and glands through the handlens, but for many others it is enough to compare the photos in a photo flora.  It depends. But to be sure, then you need a book (flora) that includes all the species in our area and usually something to magnify the plant with.

If you find something that looks unusual, you can always press and dry it and show it to a botanist later for confirmation.  A photo is often helpful, but many species you can't tell apart from photos.
[photo by Vilseskogen, Flickr, Creative Commons]

Red berries mean bird-dispersal

When you see a plant with red, fleshy berries, then its fruits are most likely eaten and dispersed around by birds.  Here is an example, the invasive species Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera mackii, Caprifoliaceae):

Birds are attracted to red, a color many other animals can't see, and since birds fly about, bird-dispersed plants are often widely spread, including to far away islands.

Keep in mind that about 50% of red fruits are toxic to humans, but not to birds, since their stomach acids are less strong, and their digestion works faster, so the toxins in the seeds are therefore not affecting the birds as strongly.

Do not eat any red berries if you aren't 100% sure what species it is. Unless you are a bird of course.
[photo by Vilseskogen, Flickr, Creative Commons]