[ Lost in the Landscape ]

the chrysanthemum problem

All around town, both road­side and trail­side, the gar­land chrysan­the­mums have been blooming.

The perky spawn of plants that have been grown for cen­turies in China and Japan for their tasty young green leaves, Chrysan­the­mum coro­nar­ium has come to be a big nui­sance in many dis­turbed areas of South­ern California.

But rather than get­ting all neg­a­tive and curs­ing the plant, let me try a dif­fer­ent tack to try to encour­age every­one to rip it out by its pretty lit­tle roots:

Did you know that 100 grams of boiled gar­land chrysan­the­mum pro­vides 51% of your rec­om­mended daily require­ments of vit­a­min A, 40% of vit­a­min C, 21% of iron, and has only 20 calo­ries? (That’s accord­ing to healthalicious.com.)

OregonLive.com offers some kitchen ideas for gar­land chrysan­the­mum: “Lightly saute the leaves and stems or whole 4– to 6-inch seedlings with sesame seeds, gar­lic, gin­ger and soy sauce… Eat raw in salad, add to soups con­tain­ing fresh gin­ger, or dunk in frit­ter bat­ter and deep-fry.”

(Be sure your greens come from a site other than a road­side that might have been sprayed with her­bi­cides by the city. And be sure you’re eat­ing gar­land chrysan­the­mum instead of the some­what sim­i­lar bush sun­flower (encelia) or San Diego sun­flower (viguiera).)

There are of course other rea­sons to pull up this plant. The Tijuana River National Estu­ar­ine Research Reserve site puts it suc­cinctly: “[C]hrysanthemum forms fields that over­take native plants such as Cal­i­for­nia buck­wheat and sagebrush–both these plants pro­vide food and shel­ter for native birds, insects and other animals.”

So in the end gar­land chrysan­the­mum is the per­fect weed. Whether you respond to thoughts of a healthy snack or to appeals of doing what you can to make the world a bet­ter place, you can get out your weed­ing tools and go to town.

A final thought: Wouldn’t it be great for green-conscious restau­rants to offer tasty and hip entrees on their menu that con­tain locally-harvested gar­land chrysan­the­mum greens that oth­er­wise would have been dam­ag­ing the ecosys­tem? Or maybe we could stock stalls at farmer’s mar­kets with piles of the stuff? Why not turn this over-abundant inva­sive plant into a resource that could be cropped, improv­ing the local land­scape at the same time?

Eat up, everyone!

This post is ded­i­cated to Out­of­doors, who first thought up the idea of ded­i­cat­ing the 13th of the month to posts on inva­sive species.

May 13 2009 | Categories: landscape • plant profiles | Tags: Chrysanthemum coronarium • garland chrysanthemum • invasive plants • weeds | 6 Comments »