[ Lost in the Landscape ]

the danger of houseplants

Con­fes­sion time. I have this fix­a­tion on Antarctica.

Most peo­ple who go to spas and do time in hotels with pool bars don’t under­stand it. But, as with all other per­fectly hon­or­able fetishes, it’s sur­pris­ing and reas­sur­ing the num­ber of peo­ple I run into who actu­ally get it.

Some­time in the mid 1990s I was seri­ously plan­ning a trip there, though it’s a trip that I still haven’t taken. I was trawl­ing around what was then the inter­net, doing some ran­dom research, when I came across some memos from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion con­cern­ing house­plants in Antarc­tica that at the time I found a lit­tle bizarre:

In line with require­ments of the Antarc­tic Con­ser­va­tion Act
[Sec­tion 4. Pro­hib­ited Acts (a) ©], and its reg­u­la­tions
[Sub­part B, Sec­tion 670.4 (f)], the Senior U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive,
Antarc­tica issued a direc­tive remind­ing U.S. Antarc­tic Pro­gram
par­tic­i­pants of pro­hi­bi­tions against main­te­nance of house­hold
plants at U.S. Antarc­tic Pro­gram (USAP) sta­tions and facil­i­ties.
That direc­tive is attached to this Envi­ron­men­tal Action
Memorandum.

To fur­ther imple­ment the direc­tive, this Envi­ron­men­tal Action
Mem­o­ran­dum details approved meth­ods for dis­po­si­tion of any
house­hold plants (and asso­ci­ated mate­ri­als) that cur­rently may be
at USAP sta­tions or facilities.

Dis­po­si­tion of House­hold Plants

Any house­hold plants, asso­ci­ated growth media (e.g., soil), and
asso­ci­ated growth con­tain­ers cur­rently at any USAP sta­tion or
facil­ity shall be turned over imme­di­ately to the NSF
Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (or designee). Such plants and growth media shall
be incin­er­ated in a suit­able metal waste col­lec­tion bar­rel (non–
plas­tic growth con­tain­ers shall be incin­er­ated at the same time).
The resul­tant ash and debris shall be ret­ro­graded from Antarc­tica
fol­low­ing approved pro­ce­dures. No plas­tic growth con­tain­ers
shall be incin­er­ated (these shall be com­pacted and placed in a
suit­able metal waste col­lec­tion bar­rel for sub­se­quent retrograde

from Antarc­tica). Spe­cial han­dling or approvals may be required
for the ret­ro­grade of these soil “con­t­a­m­i­nated” plas­tic growth
containers.

Sid­ney Draggan

Back then I thought it was ridicu­lous that any­one would be wor­ried about creep­ing char­lies, spi­der­plants, philo­den­drons and dif­f­en­bachias tak­ing over the pack ice. Even today it does seem to lean a bit towards the over­pro­tec­tion­ist direc­tion, but not by much. Cau­tion is always good with frag­ile ecosys­tems like Antarc­tica. Even if the main house­plants wouldn’t become weeds and take over the con­ti­nent, who knows what dam­ag­ing viruses and other pathogens could be stow­aways in pot­ting soil, pathogens that might threaten the few plants that live there today.

Way back when, Antarc­tica wasn’t posi­tioned at the South Pole, and it was warm enough to host many plants, includ­ing forests of Antarc­tic beech trees. In this day and age of global warm­ing, who knows how long it’d be before pen­guins would end up hav­ing to roost in fields of someone’s escaped African violets?

May 20 2008 | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: Antarctica • house plants • houseplants • invasive species | 1 Comment »

destination: yellowstone

At the risk of sound­ing too much like Chris­t­ian on Project Run­way, I’m about to embark on a lit­tle “vay-cay.” I leave San Diego on Wednes­day in my old Jeep Chero­kee for what could be its last major trip to the Amer­i­can West.

These days I worry about gas prices, my car­bon foot­print, and the mechan­i­cal reli­a­bil­ity of my trusty vehic­u­lar com­pan­ion that I’ve had since it was a baby, back in 1993. My pre­ferred modes of trans­port the last seven years has been scoot­ers I’ve owned, the first a zippy lit­tle Aprilia Scarabeo 150, and now a big Buick of a scooter, a 582cc Honda Sil­ver Wing that weighs over 500 pounds. It has no style, but I got it for cheap. (For all its mas­sive­ness, it still gets almost 50 miles to the gal­lon.)

Above: the Shell sta­tion down the hill on April 30, before they raised their prices.

But the thought of strap­ping two cam­era bags with three cam­eras, two seri­ous tri­pos and a big steel box of film to the scooter sounds a lit­tle crazy. And that’s before you fac­tor in the camp­ing gear and mul­ti­ple changes of clothes to keep me look­ing semi-snazzy. Impor­tant things, you know. Besides, when I floated the idea with John–mostly in jest–his jaw dropped with concern.

“Yel­low­stone? On a scooter?”

Maybe I was cruel to even scare him like that, par­tic­u­larly after the episode six years ago when he spent seven weeks tak­ing care of me when I was piled into a wheel­chair after a lit­tle meet­ing of the body with hard pave­ment. But the Jeep it will be for this trip. And not only will the trip be in a car, I’ll at John’s urg­ing be pack­ing a cell phone, in case the Jeep breaks down.

That cell is a big move. Even though I’ve been doing email for over twenty years and have had my own web site for well over ten, I’ve been a total Lud­dite when it comes to cell phones. Yes, they’d be handy to have some­times, but I’m not will­ing to chance being turned into one of those people–You know the type: device planted firmly to ear, mut­ter­ing inanely about foot cream or last night’s pasta salad to who­ever will lis­ten, and often doing it in a mov­ing vehi­cle while dri­ving dis­tract­edly like a chauf­feur on a Quaalude jag. Pray for my soul, folks.

So, cell­phone in pocket, I’ll be head­ing north through Las Vegas into the Nevada out­back, through desert towns with great names like Elgin, Carp(?!), Ely, Pioche, Jack­pot and Caliente. (In nam­ing just six cities, I’ve named vir­tu­ally all the cities on the map on this route that cuts due north through the Great Basin, along the East­ern edge of Nevada.) The nom­i­nal des­ti­na­tion is Yel­low­stone, and I intend to get there. But who knows what else I’ll find. There might even be some cell­phone recep­tion along the way!

May 19 2008 | Categories: photography • places • rambles | Tags: carbon footprint • cell phones • desert towns • nevada • scooters • vacations | 1 Comment »

gardens as social spaces

A lit­tle while back I wrote about the Crit­i­cal Mass pho­tog­ra­phy awards. One of the “Top 50″ pho­tog­ra­phers, Lucas For­est Foglia, had a series based on a com­mu­nity gar­den and the peo­ple who inter­act there.

Left: Lukas For­est Foglia: Savuth Water­ing [ source ]

The Great Amer­i­can Gar­den shares under­tones with the Great Amer­i­can any­thing: com­pe­ti­tion, excess and indi­vid­u­al­ism. Just look at all the bat­tles for the green­est lawn that the Scott’s fer­til­izer peo­ple per­pet­u­ate in their ads that are about to start sat­u­rat­ing the airwaves.

But com­mu­nity gar­dens allow some­thing else to hap­pen. They’re shared spaces and meet­ing places where peo­ple of dif­fer­ing back­grounds and cul­tures interact.

Foglia’s pho­tos look at the var­ied peo­ple who work plots of land in a com­mu­nity gar­den in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, and they cel­e­brate the inter­sec­tions that develop there. It’s a nice body of work and def­i­nitely worth a look.

Left: Lukas For­est Foglia: Lessons, 2005 [ source ]

May 18 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • photography | Tags: community gardens • Critical Mass • Lukas Forest Foglia | No Comments »

mariposa lily

Here’s a plant I hadn’t grown before, the Mari­posa Lily, Calo­chor­tus super­bus.

The first plant to bloom was creamy yel­low, almost white, with very few mark­ings. It had a remark­ably lacy petal thing going on–but that was due to insects munch­ing on the plant.

And then this clone bloomed, pale blush with some of the most out­ra­geous petal mark­ings I’ve ever seen on a bulb, almost like a pea­cock feather. Gee, I thought I’d got­ten the wrong bulbs since they were so dif­fer­ent. But doing my research I was assured they were actu­ally the kinds of vari­a­tion you can expect from this plant. In fact, there’s a web page that shows lots of vari­a­tions of this species.

I haven’t seen what this plant does dur­ing the sum­mer in a bed that gets moderate-to-light water­ing. This is a Cal­i­for­nia native and comes from areas where it dries out in the sum­mer, so chances are excel­lent that the bulbs would rot in the ground. I’ll try to dig up most of them and store them dry, but I’ll leave a few in the ground for a test, par­tic­u­larly those in areas that are far­ther away from the sprin­kler. They’re so cool–I hope they’ll come back next year!

May 17 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Calochortus superbus • in bloom • Mariposa lily • native plants | No Comments »

extreme “bonsai”

Here’s a project that I’ve been think­ing about doing for a while, some­thing that I see com­bines clas­si­cal bon­sai, Euro­pean top­i­ary tra­di­tions, and 60s min­i­mal­ist art. About a month ago I finally took those thoughts out into the gar­den. It’s so much a work in progress at this point, but I think you can see where it’s headed.

This is the front:

And here it is from a slight angle:

The “fin­ished” piece is sim­i­lar to a bon­sai grove in most respects, except than I’ve taken a slice out of the cen­ter of it. Con­cep­tu­ally I see this closely related to my Destruc­tive Test­ing pho­tographs, one of which I’ve posted here. And just as the pho­tographs obsess a bit about the human-culture dynamic and issues of con­trol, I see this piece as deal­ing with sim­i­lar issues, only in liv­ing form.

I started with some sheet steel that I welded into this sculpture/pot (top view):

Angle view:

Then I used stan­dard bon­sai tech­niques to root– and top-prune seven Japan­ese box­wood plants, and then planted them in a casual orchard for­ma­tion. Sev­eral clumps of elfin thyme com­plete the composition.

Sim­i­lar to bon­sai, I see this as a multi-year com­mit­ment. I intend to pinch the growths fre­quently to encour­age finer branch struc­ture, the qual­ity bon­sai peo­ple call “ram­i­fi­ca­tion.” I want the thyme to fill in more, and I plan to even­tu­ally thin the canopy so that you can bet­ter see the struc­ture of the “trees.” With time the con­tainer will weather to a nicely var­ie­gated patina of oxi­dized steel, and the leaves will dimin­ish in size to heighten the sen­sa­tion of miniaturization.

Though ele­vated to a supreme level of “nat­u­ral­ness,” bon­sai is heav­ily about con­trol. Peo­ple look at the lit­tle plants, and quickly see that there’s a human pres­ence under the sur­face of what they’re view­ing. The aims of the art, how­ever, com­bine the minia­tur­iza­tion with an effort to make the plants even more “nat­ural” than they really are–if that’s possible–and to cre­ate a sense of per­fect bal­ance and harmony.

The aims of clas­si­cal Euro­pean top­i­ary are rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from bonsai’s. But when peo­ple view the shap­ing, sculpt­ing and metic­u­lous prun­ing that are so much a part of top­i­ary, they also reg­is­ter that these are all acts of impos­ing human desires on the nat­ural world.

When­ever this piece is exhib­ited I’ll do a metic­u­lous trim­ming of the slice that’s been taken out of the cen­ter so that the slic­ing of the rec­tan­gle into two por­tions is mir­rored in the plant­ing above.

Will this com­bi­na­tion of an ele­vated nat­u­ral­ism from bon­sai with the bla­tant geom­e­try of the pot and the shear­ing and shap­ing from top­i­ary make the viewer think a bit about how their actions relate to the nat­ural world? I hope so.

I’ll post more in this series once they get to a point worth sharing…

May 15 2008 | Categories: art • my garden | Tags: bonsai • buxus • elfin thyme • Japanese boxwood • minimalist sculpture • topiary | 2 Comments »

more ancestral vegetables

One of the things I like to do in art muse­ums is to look at the fruits, flow­ers and veg­eta­bles in still life paint­ings from a cou­ple or more cen­turies back. Often I rec­og­nize exactly what the plant life is, but other times I see things that look like no plants I’ve seen or food I’ve eaten.

When I was clean­ing off my desk at work the other day I ran across an exhi­bi­tion brochure of Span­ish still lifes that one of my cowork­ers had picked up on her last trip to Barcelona. The show fea­tured work by the like of Goya, Zurabán, and Juan Fer­nán­dez “El Labrador.” The paint­ing in the brochure that caught my eye was by Jaun Sánchez Cotán, a painter who cre­ated one of my favorite series of still life works.

Jaun Sánchez Cotán. Still Life of Game, Veg­eta­bles, and Fuit, 1602. Oil on can­vas. Prado Museum.

In the paint­ing, in addi­tion to the game, there are lemons and apples that look absolutely rec­og­niz­able, like what you’d find at a farmer’s mar­ket today, though the apples–a beau­ti­ful gold with a rosy-red blush–look smaller than the mod­ern hybrids today. The root veg­eta­bles look like parsnips, and some­thing else a bit whiter, like today’s daikon radishes. But I doubt daikon would have been a hot seller in 1600s Spain.

The stick to the left with stuff attached to it–What are those? Squab? I can’t make it out clearly in a lit­tle two-by-three-inch brochure repro­duc­tion. But it’s the mas­sive, grace­fully curved veg­gie to the right that dom­i­nates the paint­ing and steals the show. It’s to my eyes a car­doon, an edi­ble this­tle very sim­i­lar to arti­chokes, though not a vari­ety you see in stores much these days.

There’s a good descrip­tion of car­doon in the Anioleka Veg­etable Seeds Co. listing:

For culi­nary use, unlike the arti­choke where the flower heads are eaten, with Car­doon, it is the thick leaf bases, hearts and roots which are uti­lized for food and har­vested in the early spring to early sum­mer months. Car­doon can be used in soups, stews and sal­ads and has a slightly spicy, celery-like fla­vor sim­il­iar to Arti­choke hearts.

Much of Cardoon’s lack of pop­u­lar­ity is due to the fact that like the arti­choke, a tremen­dous amount of space is required to grow them. Car­doon can grow up to 7 feet in height and is very eva­sive [i.e., inva­sive] in most cli­mates. Care should be taken to remove the flower heads of the plant before they pro­duce seeds, for Car­doon can agres­sively nat­u­ral­ize through­out your property.

In addi­tion to nat­u­ral­iz­ing through­out your prop­erty, this plant can take do lots of dam­age to your local ecosys­tem. You run across large stands of arti­choke this­tle in the local South­ern Cal­i­for­nia canyons, and I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they were actu­ally car­doons loosed from gar­dens or agri­cul­ture. Go ahead and grow them, but grow them responsibly.

But back to the Sánchez Cotán paint­ing. All the beau­ti­fully ren­dered fruits and veg­gies and game occupy this dra­matic space that looks some­thing like a black cup­board or win­dowsill, but also some­thing that looks like a dark infi­nite void. Because of this amaz­ing space and ambi­gu­ity it looks decid­edly mod­ern and fresh to my eyes. And the vibra­tion back and forth of the once-live sub­jects with the dark dark dark­ness con­jures up notions of life and death, and the fragility of existence–all that with­out the cheap the­atrics of skulls that often appear in paint­ings like this. This is van­i­tas paint­ing at its best.

The painter uses this back­ground in sev­eral other works, includ­ing my absolute favorite one of the series, a paint­ing that so hap­pens to be in the col­lec­tion of my local art museum:

Jaun Sánchez Cotán. Quince, Cab­bage, Melon and Cucum­ber, 1602. Oil on can­vas. San Diego Museum of Art.

I can’t tell you how much I love this paint­ing. A good forty per­cent of the sur­face is black. Absolute, utter black. The fruits and veg­eta­bles begin in the light, and draw your eye as you fol­low along the grace­ful curve from the lively quince, to the extrav­a­gantly ruf­fled cab­bage, to the sen­sual melon sliced open with a slice taken out for you to savor with your eyes, and finally to the final veg­etable, a cucum­ber that curves gen­tly but insis­tently towards the back, towards the envelop­ing black­ness, a black­ness that makes itself felt every bit as much as any of the fruits and vegetables.

Quinces and cab­bages today look pretty much like what’s in the paint­ing. There are so many mel­ons out there that it’s hard to keep track, but it looks like an ances­tor to the French heir­loom sold today as Charentais. And the green, lumpy cucumber–It’s totally rec­og­niz­able, though it looks closer to gherkins or the Asian vari­eties than the smooth, plastic-surfaced cukes that you see in the stores most of the time.

Inter­est­ing veg­eta­bles, for sure, and what an amaz­ing painting!

May 10 2008 | Categories: art | Tags: apples • cabbages • cardoons • cucumbers • heirloom vegetables • Juan Sanchez Cotan • lemons • melons • parsnips • quinces • still life paintings • still lifes | 1 Comment »

ancestral vegetables

Sat­ur­day I put some seeds of Armen­ian cucum­ber into the ground.

There are heir­loom veg­eta­bles and then there are ances­tral vari­eties like this, vari­eties that go so far back into his­tory that to grow them and have them at your table is to con­nect with his­tory, tra­di­tions and the ground that they grow in. The Armen­ian cucum­ber dates back at least to the fif­teenth cen­tury, when it was intro­duced into Italy from Arme­nia. I’m sure it was being con­sumed long before then.

Although called a cucum­ber it’s actu­ally clas­si­fied as a melon, Cucumis melo var. flex­u­o­sus, and is closer genet­i­cally to hon­ey­dews than to the stan­dard Eng­lish or pick­ling cucum­bers. With its unusual ribbed creamy green exte­rior, you have to do a bit of explain­ing when you share the extras from the gar­den: well, yes…it’s called a cucum­ber, but it’s really some­thing different…

The flesh is mild and firmer than any other cucum­ber out there, almost crunchy, the tex­ture of unripe melon. The fruits can eas­ily reach 30 inches long, but are best picked when half that size. They’re great in sal­ads, and they pair amaz­ingly well with tomatoes.

Last year I started them in late June and had cucum­bers 60 days later. Two hills of plants were plenty for two peo­ple, with cukes left over for the neigh­bors. Pretty good soil, mod­er­ate water­ing and occa­sional fer­til­iz­ing kept them happy and pro­duc­tive until the end of Sep­tem­ber. Some peo­ple trel­lis them, but they’re fine if you let them roam like other mel­ons. I like this vari­ety so much that it’s one of those plants that I’ll keep plant­ing as long as I have room for it.

May 06 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Armenian cucumber • heirloom vegetables • vegetables | No Comments »

cinco de mayo plant combinations

In cel­e­bra­tion of Cinco de Mayo, here’s a patch of the gar­den fea­tur­ing the red, white and green col­ors that dom­i­nate the Mex­i­can flag.

The plants:

Celosia ‘New Look’ (intense red, on the left)
Salvia micro­phylla ‘Hot Lips’ (red-and-white bicolor on the right)
Salvia nemerosa ‘Snow Hills’ (white flow­er­ing plant in the background)

May 05 2008 | Categories: my garden | Tags: celosia • plant combinations • red flowers • salvias • white flowers | No Comments »

wolfgang laib: a different sort of botanical art

The first time I encoun­tered work by Wolf­gang Laib I almost walked past it. The piece con­sisted of sev­eral uniformly-sized sulphur-yellow piles of some sub­stance, each only a very few inches high.

Some art­work you look at and you get imme­di­ately. Oth­ers don’t click until you read the label for some sort of clar­i­fi­ca­tion that can turn into one of those OMG aha moments. Turns out the lit­tle yel­low piles were made of pollen that the artist had collected.

The piles were small, but any­one who grows plants knows that com­ing up with that quan­tity of pollen would take days, weeks, maybe longer, and bespoke a cer­tain kind of focus (or utter obses­sive­ness). It’s an art­work that high­lights the impor­tance of the work’s mate­ri­als as well as the processes and lifestyle the artist needs to com­mit to in order to make the work.

The Five Moun­tains Not to Climb On (Die fünf unbesteig­baren Berge), 1984. Hazel­nut pollen, height: approx­i­mately 2 3/4 inches [ source ]

Left: The cover of the cat­a­log, Wolf­gang Laib Eine Retrospektive.

Another room in that exhibit I attended had one of his stun­ning squares, also made of pollen, laid out on the ground. Min­i­mal­ism has strongly influ­enced how sub­se­quent artists approach what they do, and mak­ing uni­form piles or geo­met­ric shapes of some­thing can verge on cliché. But the edges of the pile were a lit­tle soft, with the pollen defy­ing stay­ing exactly within the mar­gins of the square, and the soft­ened edges made the square seemed to dema­te­ri­al­ize and float, like the rec­tan­gles in Rothko’s paintings.

Assertive in color but intensely frag­ile in nature, the work showed a rev­er­ence by the artist to his mate­ri­als. But at the same time it required a respect from the viewer to at least not do some­thing as blun­der­ingly insen­si­tive as to walk through the art­work. Unfor­tu­nately, before that La Jolla exhi­bi­tion closed, some­one had done just that.

May 04 2008 | Categories: art | Tags: pollen • Wolfgang Laib | 1 Comment »

wild and out of control

All over town here in San Diego you see the black mus­tard plant, Bras­sica nigra, now approach­ing the end of its bloom­ing period.

The undu­lat­ing yel­low mounds of it doing its thing are a spec­tac­u­lar sight, so much so that Napa Val­ley, up north in the wine coun­try, has an annual Mus­tard Fes­ti­val that’s just come to its con­clu­sion. The fes­ti­val host the expected Napa wine and food offer­ings, and also hosts con­tests in pho­tog­ra­phy, art and cook­ing with mus­tard. In addi­tion to how the plant looks, it has an inter­est­ing his­tory, as told by Napa pio­neer Calvin Chester­field Grif­fith, quoted on the Mus­tard Festival’s site:

This is the story of our early Cal­i­for­nia when it was only a wilder­ness, with great quan­ti­ties of trees, beau­ti­ful plains, all kinds of wild ani­mals and birds; many, many Indi­ans, and no white men at all.

Father Serra had come from Spain to Mex­ico to spread the reli­gion of Jesus Christ, and hear­ing about this beau­ti­ful, vast coun­try to the north, decided to explore it. With a few faith­ful fol­low­ers and Indian guides, he trav­eled north through what is now our glo­ri­ous and loved Cal­i­for­nia. As he trav­eled he scat­tered to the right, and to the left, the mus­tard seeds which he had brought with him from Spain.

The fol­low­ing year, as they returned south they fol­lowed ‘a rib­bon of gold;’ and fol­low­ing that path again Father Serra estab­lished his ‘Rosary of Mis­sions,’ begin­ning in San Diego and end­ing in Sonoma.

It’s an appeal­ing, roman­tic story, but it also side­steps the fact that the mus­tard has invaded much of the West, and can be found in most of the United States. As a robust win­ter annual, it can out-compete most native plants, par­tic­u­larly in dis­turbed loca­tions, and form vir­tual mono­cul­tures that pre­vent other plants from get­ting a foothold. The pic­tures above were taken a few blocks from my house, in Tecolote Canyon. Because of abun­dant mois­ture ear­lier in the year, the plants were well over my head in spots, eas­ily seven feet tall.

To the left is a pic­ture of a part of the canyon where the mus­tard hasn’t taken over. It’s a good exam­ple of coastal sage scrub, rich in plantlife and alive with birds and insects. The white-flowering plant in the fore­ground is black sage, Salvia mel­lif­era, bloom­ing up a storm, with yel­low deer­weed (Lotus sco­par­ius) behind it. So what would I prefer–a rich eco­log­i­cal mix of plants that host a range of ani­mal life, or a showy burst of color that nour­ishes almost no ani­mal life and is about to dry out to a wild­fire magnet?

Alert on a new inva­sive: Cousin Jenny, a new Mas­ter Gar­dener in South Car­olina, alerted me to a new inva­sive plant, cogongrass, a plant that’s being listed as a treat even worse than the suf­fo­cat­ing kudzu. Here’s a link to a story in the Beau­fort Gazzette. Like the black mus­tard, it’s an attrac­tive plant, but it’s also seri­ous bad news.

More on weeds and inva­sives: I’ve been leaf­ing through Weeds of Cal­i­for­nia and Other West­ern States, by Joseph M. DiT­o­maso and Eve­lyn A. Healy. It’s a sump­tu­ous two-volume set, a coffee-table book of weeds if there ever was one, with 3000 images of the 750 evil species it lists. It also comes with a CD-ROM of the images in the book that can be used with­out roy­al­ties for edu­ca­tional purposes.

In addi­tion to the 750 nas­ties, there’s a table in the back with poten­tial future threats from plants that are just enter­ing the ecosys­tem. The book leans towards the tech­ni­cal side, but there’s a handy glos­sary and index. It took me 20 min­utes to fig­ure out that the annoy­ing grass com­ing up in spots around the yard was tall veld­grass. But with other species I was able to go right to the offender.

I found it strik­ing that a huge num­ber of the weeds–like the black mustard–were of Euro­pean ori­gin, likely brought over by set­tlers from there over the past cen­turies. Con­trols have since been erected that help reduce the entry into the coun­try of plants that might prove inva­sive. How­ever, with peo­ple, prod­ucts and pro­duce jet­ting all around the world these days, it’s inevitable that there will be waves of invad­ing plants from regions other than Europe. The cogongrass that’s of con­cern in the South, for instance, comes from Asia.

As I wan­der around the yard inven­to­ry­ing the plants com­ing up in the crevices, it’s weirdly com­fort­ing to know that my yard is con­tribut­ing to pre­serv­ing the earth’s bio­log­i­cal diversity–though unfor­tu­nately I’m not nec­es­sar­ily help­ing along the species that really need it the most!

May 03 2008 | Categories: landscape • plant profiles | Tags: black mustard • Brassica nigra • cogongrass • exotics • weeds | No Comments »