a new weed

This past win­ter I was notic­ing a weed pop­ping up all around the yard that I hadn’t noticed before. I was men­tion­ing it to John, and added, “I’m not sure what it is, though think it could be some sort of euphorbia.”

Then in the gen­tly tact­ful way spouses have of cor­rect­ing you and point­ing out your blind spots he qui­etly cleared his throat and pointed to one of the four young pot­ted plants we have around the gar­den of Euphor­bia lam­bii, one of my dry garden-adapted plants from the Canary Islands. “Maybe it’s that?”

Uh, like duh. What else would it be?

Last year was the first that these plants bloomed, and this spring they bloomed with a vengeance. Dur­ing sunny weather over the last few weeks I’ve heard lit­tle pop­ping noises from the direc­tion of the plants, and have come to the con­clu­sion that the sounds were that of seed pods explod­ing and jet­ti­son­ing the dust-like seed every­where.

I may come to regret the day I intro­duced these to the gar­den, which accord­ing to my records is March 9, 2008.

Speak­ing of weedy plants, here’s another sur­prise seedling from the gar­den, a lit­tle baby red foun­tain grass, one of three seedlings I noticed this year. In recent years the related green foun­tain grass, Pen­nise­tum setaceum has become a nox­ious (though stun­ningly beau­ti­ful) weed and has landed high on vir­tu­ally every thou-shalt-not-plant list issued for Cal­i­for­nia. But many peo­ple gave a by to this related red plant. It was often pushed as being ster­ile and inca­pable of repro­duc­ing by seed, a piece of mis­in­for­ma­tion even I relayed in this blog. (I’ve cor­rected that ear­lier oops in case any­one reads that ear­lier post.) As you can see here it can repro­duce by seed, though this form doesn’t spawn the same way reg­u­lar foun­tain grass does. Nor is it imme­di­ately the same mon­ster pest that feather grass (Nas­sella tenuis­sima) can be.

Pok­ing around the web I found an updated plant descrip­tion at San Mar­cos Grow­ers that includes some inter­est­ing back­ground on this plant:

Recent work in prepa­ra­tion for the grass sec­tions of the Flora of North Amer­ica, which will include nat­u­ral­ized and cul­ti­vated grasses, indi­cates that the name cho­sen for this plant will be Pen­nise­tum advena or per­haps P. x advena. Dr. Joseph K. Wipff, pre­vi­ously with Texas A&M and now a tur­f­grass breeder, wrote the sec­tion on Pen­nise­tum and has indi­cated that Red Foun­tain Grass is most likely a cross between P. setaceum and P. macrostachys (AKA ‘Bur­gundy Giant’). As a hybrid the name would most appro­pri­ately be Pen­nise­tum x advena ‘Rubrum’. The latin word advena means “newly arrived” or “stranger.”

So is it safe to plant this form of foun­tain grass? Here’s my think­ing: Hybrids between species are often ster­ile. (Think of mules, the off­spring of a horse and a don­key.) But every now and then some­thing hap­pens that allows the hybrid to repro­duce. Some­times the seedlings will be just as nearly ster­ile as the imme­di­ate par­ent, but other times a muta­tion could ren­der the seedling entirely fer­tile. In that lat­ter sce­nario the nearly-sterile foun­tain grass could turn into some­thing with the ugly inva­sive poten­tial of its Pen­nise­tum setaceum ancestor.

In other words, today I would be cau­tious and not plant it. Unfor­tu­nately, almost twenty years ago, we designed the front yard around a big mound of the stuff. The plants look stun­ning and move gra­ciously in response to the breezes. Their size is per­fect for the spot, and their red color is unmatched among other grasses. Every now and then I look at other options, like those rec­om­mended in the Don’t Plant a Pest brochure put out by the Cal­i­for­nia Inva­sive Plant Coun­cil. But these lists often fall short in the alter­na­tives they offer and end up read­ing like, “Cheese­cake is bad for you. Would you like to eat this deli­cious raw rutabaga instead?” So…I’m still look­ing for the per­fect replace­ment plant–hopefully some sort of native, but in the mean­time I’m pulling the occa­sional seedlings.

June 20 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • •

10 Responses to “a new weed”

  1. Brad on 20 Jun 2010 at 8:14 am #

    Now there’s noth­ing wrong with raw rutabaga. C’mon you know it’s good for you. I’d be wary of any plant that sup­pos­edly can’t repro­duce. In gen­eral I think the ster­ile label is stuck on there to sell plants that peo­ple would oth­er­wise com­plain about. Sup­pos­edly there is a ster­ile broom they sell here. I wouldn’t bet on it. It’s a shame that all the most beau­ti­ful grasses seem to be incred­i­bly inva­sive though.

  2. ryan on 20 Jun 2010 at 8:55 am #

    I gotta join Brad in defense of raw rutabaga here. Chock full of antiox­i­dants. I don’t really see the pen­nise­tums reseed up in north­ern cal­i­for­nia so much, not like mex­i­can feather grass at all. Doesn’t really win you any style awards up here though. Some of the euphor­bias have nat­u­ral­ized and reseed pretty heav­ily. The vol­un­teers seem slow at first, so I haven’t been too afraid of them. It’s good to know that E. lam­bii is a reseeder.

  3. Gayle Madwin on 20 Jun 2010 at 10:08 am #

    That was quite an anal­ogy you came up with. Unlike your other com­menters, I’m cer­tainly not going to defend rutabaga, raw or oth­er­wise. (I don’t think I’ve ever actu­ally eaten rutabaga or even a turnip of any sort, but as far as I’m con­cerned, pretty much ANY veg­etable other than pota­toes and corn is totally inedible.)

    I’ve never noticed the “Don’t Plant a Pest” brochures being so dis­sat­is­fac­tory, but that’s prob­a­bly because I’m not famil­iar enough with most of the “pest” plants to know what their appeal is. I think that’s the eas­i­est way to be able to avoid cheese­cake — don’t find out what it tastes like in the first place.

  4. Elephant's Eye on 20 Jun 2010 at 11:08 am #

    Planted foun­tain grass, then began to realise it was a mis­take. And years later I still remove the seedlings. Bought the red, was told it is not as inva­sive. But it grew HUGE, so dug it up and now have 2 small bits, con­fined in pots.

  5. Town Mouse on 20 Jun 2010 at 3:36 pm #

    Ah, yes, Euphor­bia. I’m just so glad I took that out (actu­ally, I got pro­fes­sion­als to take it out). One visit to the emer­gency room because I washed a tiny amount of the sap from my eye­brow into my eye was more than enought. “Euphor­bia?” said the nice doc­tor, and was quite pleased I’d brought a sam­ple ’cause he’d never seen one, though he gets the vic­tims all the time. Then again, I still have a few lit­tle ones (1 foot high) that don’t seem all that invasive…

  6. Jean on 20 Jun 2010 at 4:29 pm #

    The whole issue of how to grow non-native plants with­out inad­ver­tently intro­duc­ing inva­sive exotics into the local ecosys­tem is one I strug­gle with as a gar­dener. I think I’m com­ing to the con­clu­sion that the appro­pri­ate stance for gar­den­ers in rela­tion to intro­duc­ing new plants into the gar­den is one of humil­ity and con­ser­vatism. By humil­ity, I mean that we have to rec­og­nize that we don’t really know what we’re doing, that gar­den­ing is a big exper­i­ment, and be cau­tious. By con­ser­vatism (not a char­ac­ter­is­tic I usu­ally embrace :-) ), I mean that we shouldn’t always be rush­ing out to get the lat­est thing; there’s a lot to be said for tried and true plants that have been grown in local gar­dens for years (or even gen­er­a­tions) and that have not turned out to be inva­sive. To get infor­ma­tion for the U.S. on plants that have already been iden­ti­fied as inva­sive (and where) see the Inva­sive Plant Atlas of the United States (http://www.invasiveplantatlas.org/index.html).

  7. tina on 20 Jun 2010 at 6:38 pm #

    Some­times those euphor­bias can be weedy even though they are such stun­ners in the gar­den. Maybe you could dead­head this year? I hope it works out. I myself stay away from pen­nise­tums. I don’t know why but I’ve asso­ci­ated them with self seed­ing though some say mis­cant­hus self seed I’ve not had that issue here. Now if I could just find a way out from under snow on the moun­tain and creep­ing mon­key grass…

  8. Wendy on 21 Jun 2010 at 10:36 am #

    nice weeds!! :)

    I’m sure you’ll find some­thing between cheese­cake and rutabaga. Keep searching!

  9. Nell Jean on 22 Jun 2010 at 5:59 am #

    Please pass the cooked rutaba­gas, my very favorite.

    Inva­sives and their replace­ments vary from one coast to the other. I never thought of pam­pas grass being a fire haz­ard, just overblown and ugly for a per­sonal land­scape. Now I have another rea­son to dis­like it.

  10. lostlandscape on 28 Jun 2010 at 7:07 pm #

    Brad and Ryan, maybe I’m being too harsh on rutaba­gas. It just sounded less appe­tiz­ing than the word “turnip.” If there ever was a forum where you shouldn’t trash rutaba­gas, it’d for sure be a gar­den­ing site.

    Gayle, not learn­ing to love cheese­cake is prob­a­bly the best way to go. It’s eas­ier to start on the right foot and make do with all the other remark­able plants that are out there to use. I prob­a­bly eat more of my veg­gies than you, but I still have a soft spot for cheese­cake. All bad things in moderation.

    EE, my red foun­tain grass has formed a large mound, but it def­i­nitely doesn’t get as mon­strous as for peo­ple who water it reg­u­larly. Some­one I know watered hers daily for a while, and the plants were immense.

    TM, there’s a local native euphor­bia (E. mis­era) that I’ve been inter­ested in try­ing. I wish it were a more comely plant, though it’d look just fine in a dry desert-scape. I’m sorry you had the awful/classic sap in the eye encounter. I hear about it enough that I’m always care­ful when work­ing around them.

    Jean, I’ve been try­ing to limit more of my plant­i­ngs to more local plants. But they’re often both hard to find and don’t always have the quick self-starting abil­ity that the pop­u­lar­ized exotics do. I sup­pose these exotics’ abil­ity to out-grow many of the local is as good a rea­son to avoid them where pos­si­ble. But it really is hard for this curi­ous per­son to limit my curios­ity to what I can see in pub­lic gardens.

    Tina, I began dead­head­ing this year and am hop­ing for an eas­ier year next time, but I know I’ve waited too long. Snow on the moun­tain and mon­key grass haven’t been invited to my gar­den, and fol­low­ing your advice they won’t get past the bouncer.

    Wendy, hmmm… rutabaga cheese­cake? (Sounds like county fair food…)

    Nell Jean, maybe I’ll have to give rutaba­gas another try, decades later… Pam­pas and “per­sonal land­scapes” def­i­nitely seem at odds, as you men­tion, since they’re such huge beasts. Some gar­dens that still have it look like peo­ple keep­ing mas­tiffs in tiny New York apartments–way out of scale.

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