Gumweed

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, bird of paradise, buddleia, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, purple phlox, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds, cultivated and farmer’s sunflowers; pyracantha berries; local supermarket roasting green chile people buy by the burlap bag.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, whorled milkweed, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, datura, scarlet creeper, pale trumpets, clammy weed, stickleaf, Dutch, white prairie, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, goat’s head, alfilerillo, prostrate knotweed, toothed spurge, pigweed, ragweed, Russian thistle, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, paper flower, spiny lettuce, horseweed, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, gumweed, Tahokia daisy, late summer grasses; buds on broom senecio, heath and purple asters.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, golden spur columbine, Hartweig evening primrose, nasturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum.

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hosta, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, Jupiter’s beard, large-leaf soapwort, baby’s breath, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppy, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, garlic chives, Autumn Joy sedum, cut-leaf coneflower, zinnias, Maximilian sunflower.

Looking south: Blaze and rugosa roses, rose of Sharon, Illinois bundle flower, sweet pea, tomatillo.

Looking west: Russian sage, caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, David phlox, flowering spurge, blue flax, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, lead plant, purple ice flower, purple coneflower, Mönch aster; purple coneflowers germinating.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum; Sweet 100 tomatoes reddening.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds, gecko, cabbage butterfly, bee, black harvester and small red ants, mosquito.

Weather: Storm came through Monday; left little water but temperatures began dropping ten degrees some mornings; rain yesterday, heavy mist this morning; 13:04 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: I live on a hill. The road descending the slope makes a ninety degree turn outside my drive. The opposite lot is vacant and monsoon weeds grow to the pavement edge, further limiting visibility.

Since it’s a county, not state road, there’s no maintenance. Neighbors with mowers and blades rake the shoulder whenever they get annoyed. The taller, late-growing plants come back, while shorter ones like hairy yellow asters and toothed spurge thrive at their bases.

For years, Russian thistle and pigweed were the primary plants. Last summer, white sweet clover was dominant with some gumweed and Hopi tea joining the mowed asters.

These apparently were considered worse than the allergens. Last winter, someone used his snowplow to scrape back several feet into a short berm. For the next several weeks, the edge of the road was impossible to find because loosened dirt washed across the pavement.

Ragweed came back in place of the clover. Since it remained short until the past week, the gumweed wasn’t cut down in July and has grown knee to thigh high. While the bushy mounds are covered with buds, few are ever open. They blend into the mass of noxious greenery along the curve.

Gumweeds are survivors. The most common form, Grindelia squarrosa, emerged in the Great Plains, possibly within the Rocky Mountains, but has been reported everywhere in the country except the southeast. It’s a typical late summer composite, yellow with disk and ray flowers, a deep taproot, and seeping resin that coats the thick leaves.

As it moved southeast into Kansas and Texas, curly gumweed shed it’s ray flowers and developed reddish stems. Many think that it became a separate species, Grindelia nuda. Other gumweed species are found only in Texas, suggesting the effects of isolation on a plant adapting to changing soils and irrigation patterns.

The gumweed growing by my drive is likely to have twice the chromosomes as other gumweeds, but most consider aphanactis to be a subspecies of nuda. In western Chihuahua the teeth along the leave edges of aphanactis are more spiny than glandular. West of continental divide, nuda crossbreeds with endemic Arizona species in still more attempts to adapt to even harsher environments.

The local gumweed, when given the opportunity, begins branching a foot or so above ground and rebranches into separated terminal buds. The outer shell of each is covered with rows of flexed leaves or bracts that make the rounded buds look more formidable than they are.

As it opens, the young head widens out into a concave disk that often fills with the gleaming white resin. The collection of narrow, tubular flowers continues to expand into a flat button surrounded by bracts. Finally, the outermost ring of disk flowers grows taller.

Lenora Curtin thought the fringe collected pollen from the center, when the flower failed to be pollinated externally. However, Max Dunford, who experimented with crossing aphanactis with local Texas and Arizona species, believes the flowers cannot fertilize themselves.

One would think the highly visible gum would have invited experimentation, but the Navajo have more recorded uses for the liquid than the Pueblos. They used it to induce vomiting, destroy ant hills, and bind cuts. It may be the plant was replaced by other cures after the conquest, since William Dunmire and Gail Tierney have heard Picuris and San Juan used it for kidney problems, Jemez used it to clean skin abrasions, and Cochiti used the flowers to relieve toothache pains.

However, Curtin found northern New Mexican Spanish speakers had found more uses for yerba del buey, than the indigenous people in the 1940's, including a tea for kidney problems and steam for rheumatism. Even today, Robert Trotter found aphanactis is one of the home remedies used along the lower Rio Grand in Texas to treat sores, while Michael Moore has discovered other local uses that exploit the anti-bacterial qualities of the leaves.

An alternative explanation for the comparative paucity of pueblo uses is that the plant was simply less common in the past when the native herbals were being developed, but was more common by the time the Navajo and Spanish invaded. We know it was in the area in prehistoric times from a bowl, containing edible amaranth seeds mixed with gumweed seeds. No one knows if the mixture was deliberate, or simple contamination from two plants in seed at the same time.

We also know gumweed thrives on overgrazed and otherwise destroyed lands and that it, and the allied squarrosa, spread along rail lines and roads. When Meriwether Lewis first spotted squarrosa, it was growing along the Missouri. When Joseph Hooker saw aphanactis in 1887, it was growing in Cañon City, a mine support town on the Arkansas. When Per Axel Rydberg documented the rayless flower in 1906, he found the biennial on the sandy soils around the rail town of Durango in southwestern Colorado.

Sometime last Sunday, after I’d taken my pictures, someone cut a foot wide swatch of verbiage around the curve, including the ragweed and gumweed, to leave the dying plants to mulch their seeds. Once again, someone has insured the ruderal plants will continue to thrive when already degraded land is newly abused.

Notes:
Curtin, Leonora Scott Muse. Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, republished 1997, with revisions by Michael Moore.

Didry, N., M. Pinkas, and M. Torck. "The Chemical Composition and Antibacterial Activity of Leaves of Various Grindelia Species," Plantes Medicinales et Phytotherapie 16:7-15:1982.

Dunford, M. P. "A Cytogenetic Analysis of Certain Polyploids in Grindelia (Compositae)," American Journal of Botany 51: 41–61:1964, cited by Strother and Wetter.

Dunmire, William M. and Gail D. Tierney. Wild Plants of the Pueblo Province, 1995.

Moore, Michael. Los Remedios, 1990.

Nesom, G. L. "Studies in the Systematics of Mexican and Texan Grindelia (Asteraceae: Astereae)," Phytologia 68:303-332:1990; considers aphanactis part of nuda.
Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998, summarizes data from a number of ethnographies including Paul A. Vestal, "The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho," Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology Papers 40:1-94:1952.

Rydberg, Per Axel. Flora of Colorado, 1906.

Strother, John L. and Mark A. Wetter. "Grindelia squarrosa (Pursh) Dunal," on eFloras’ Flora of North America website; considers aphanactis part of squarrosa.

Trotter, Robert T. II. "Folk Remedies as Indicators of Common Illnesses: Examples from the United States-Mexico Border," Journal of Ethnopharmacology 4:207-221:1981.

Weber, William A. "Colorado Collections Made by Sir Joseph Hooker in 1887," Journal of Biogeography 30:679-685:2003.

Photograph: Aphanactis gumweed in most of its phases, 22 August 2010, with hairy yellow asters in back; the reflections are from the resin.

Hosta 'Royal Standard'

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, bird of paradise, buddleia, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, sweet pea, purple phlox, Sensation cosmos, cultivated sunflower; farmer’s sunflower heads bent with oil heavy seeds; red showing in tomatoes.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, whorled milkweed, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, datura, scarlet creeper, pale trumpets, clammy weed, stickleaf, Dutch, white prairie, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, goat’s head, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, prostrate knotweed, toothed spurge, pigweed, Russian thistle, chamisa, goat’s beard, paper flower, spiny lettuce, horseweed, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, gumweed, Tahokia daisy, late summer grasses; buds of ragweed and purple asters.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, golden spur columbine, Hartweig evening primrose, squash, naturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum.

Looking east: Hosta, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, coral bells, Jupiter’s beard, large-leaf soapwort, baby’s breath, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppy, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, garlic chives, cut-leaf coneflower, zinnias; buds on Autumn Joy sedum.

Looking south: Blaze and rugosa roses, rose of Sharon, Illinois bundle flower, tomatillo.

Looking west: Russian sage, caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, David phlox, flowering spurge, blue flax, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, purple ice flower, purple coneflower, Mönch aster; grape hyacinth leaves coming up.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum, tomato, pepper.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, goldfinch, hummingbird on hollyhocks, bees, wasp, dragon fly, black harvester and small red ants, mosquitoes.

Weather: Rain Monday and Wednesday; 13:17 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Trees, I was told growing up in Michigan, present special challenges because grass may not grow under them, or if it does, cannot be mowed when the roots are exposed.

The answer was to plant something like ivy or vinca under the canopy which would cover the bare spots. The first might also climb the trunk, while the other occasionally blooms.

An alternative was to surround the tree with plants with uniform, high foliage that would hide the barren areas. I saw lots of liriope used in the Dallas area in the 1980's, while hostas were common in an old Madison neighborhood I passed in 1991.

The idea of a circular bed surrounding a tree has taken on another life down the road where the owners have planted tall perennials around every young tree in their lawn, perhaps taking advantage of spot irrigation. A solution that became familiar with repetition in monochromatic greens in Wisconsin becomes silly when reproduced in bright yellow and rosy purple.

I developed a particular dislike for hostas when my mother stranded some plantain lilies on the north side of the house between the Japanese yew and the porch, further shaded by a lackluster Jackmanii clemantis. Not only did the plants probably need a little more sun and water than they received, but, as Allan Armitage warns, it takes hostas at least five years to reach maturity and another three to look anything like their pictures.

Eight years is a very long time for a child. By the time a six year old has turned fourteen, he or she no longer looks at nature the same way and opinions are definitely formed.

When it came time for me to find something for the deep shade under my raised walk, I discovered almost nothing, not even lilies of the valley or pansies, would grow because it was too hot and dry. Most shade plants are from forest environments and expect water.

In desperation, I ordered some Royal Standard hostas in 1998; the one closer to the sun survived. Later, I saw some Francee at a reasonable price in a big box in 2001; again one survived. Since weeds also won’t grow there, I’ve more or less abandoned the spot after plants in neighboring areas grew big enough to protect the dirt from the winds.

The two hostas behaved much as my mother’s plants had. They produce leaves every year, and the Royal Standard sticks up its naked artichoke tipped stalk every August. Francee bloomed in 2003 and 2005, but hasn’t bothered since.

This is the first year the Royal Standard looks good, and it’s not because of maturity. While it’s been struggling, another plant that doesn’t belong here, a Lady Banks rose, has slowly been getting established. Every winter, most of the canes die, and it regrows from the base. This year, its dark leaves have produced a lattice through which the gardenia-white flowers peak. I realized it’s the stem I most dislike about the plant.

Hosta weren’t always trite. The genus probably emerged in east central China before the last glaciers, and migrated to Korea and Japan, where the day-blooming species diversified. At least one, Hosta plantaginea, moved south where it bloomed at night and was fragrant.

The Chinese began cultivating yu zan during the Han dynasty (206 bc-220 ad). The plants first taken to France from Macao in 1784 by Charles de Guignes have no spontaneous wild relatives today. The plant my mother grew was the product of great artifice.

Wayside Gardens, founded in 1920 by Jan Jacob Grullemans and Elmer Schultz in Mentor, Ohio, was one of the primary sources for the roots for generations. My mother had their catalogs when I was a child, although she may have gotten her plants from a friend.

In 1963, Grullemans, now called John James, applied for a patent for Royal Standard, which he developed by fertilizing a plantaginea flower with pollen from a sieboldiana, a hardier plant from Japan. He basically kept all the features of the mother, the fragrant white flowers and wide, ovate yellow-green leaves, but injected the vigor of the male.

His goal was apparently to make my mother’s plant a bit less sulky, a bit more palatable to the diverse customers for his nursery. While Gruellemans says it prefers "wet, hot seasons and rich loam or clay loam," it’s resistence to drought is described as "good."

After his success, and that earlier by Alex Cummings with Honeybells, a cross between the same species introduced in 1950, others began hybridizing different varieties of hostas. Since the late 1960's, breeders have been able to exploit tissue culture to expedite their work, rather than the root divisions use by Grullemans.

Hostas are now marketed for their foliage, with recommendations that people use a number of cultivars to produce a "marvelous contrast in texture and color." Armitage even suggests people remove the stalks that "detract from the magnificence of the plant." Of course, gardeners space them for their mature size, and so most young plantings look like collections of specimens separated by mulch as dreary as my mother’s attempt.

That which can become exotic when left to itself in the rio arriba almost always looks mundane when grown by the rules.

As for the original problem with trees, my answer as a child was the yard of an abandoned house I passed on the way to school where lilies of the valley had gone wild under old maples. They had every characteristic of hostas - seasonal white flowers on stems rising from prolific foliage - but in miniature with darker greens that reinforced, not disrupted, the coolness of the shade.

Notes:
Armitage, Allan M. Herbaceous Perennial Plants, 1989.

Gruellmans, John James. "Hosta Plant," plant patent PP2467, issued January 1965.

Schmid, W. George. "H. plantaginea," 2007, on his Hosta Library website.

_____. "The Genus Hosta," 2008, American Hosta Society website.

Wayside Gardens. Catalog, Spring 1986, "marvelous" quote.

Photograph: Hosta ‘Royal Standard’ around 10:15 in the morning, 15 August 2010.

Caryopteris 'Longwood Blue'

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, bird of paradise, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, purple phlox, Sensation cosmos, cultivated and farmer’s sunflowers; someone down the road’s selling green chili.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, whorled milkweed, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, datura, pale trumpets, clammy weed, stickleaf, Dutch, white prairie, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, goat’s head, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, prostrate knotweed, toothed spurge, lamb’s quarter, pigweed, Russian thistle, goat’s beard, paper flower, spiny lettuce, horseweed, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, gumweed, snakeweed, Tahokia daisy; late summer grasses; buds of ragweed.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, golden spur columbine, Hartweig evening primrose, squash, naturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Parker’s Gold yarrow, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, orange coneflower, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum.

Looking east: Hosta, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, coral bells, Jupiter’s beard, large-leaf soapwort, baby’s breath, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppy, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, garlic chives, cut-leaf coneflower, zinnias; color showing on Autumn Joy sedum buds.

Looking south: Blaze and rugosa roses, rose of Sharon, Illinois bundle flower, sweet peas, tomatillo.

Looking west: Russian sage, buddleia, caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, David phlox, flowering spurge, blue flax, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, purple ice flower, purple coneflower, Mönch aster.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum, tomato, pepper.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird, goldfinches on chocolate flowers, geckos, sulfur butterfly, bees, black harvester and small red ants, mosquitoes, worms.

Weather: Rain Monday afternoon and Thursday evening; people out early in mornings on rider mowers or with hand tools beating back the pigweed and whatever else has sprouted with the monsoons; 13:35 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Pruning is one of those great mysteries shrouded in wisdom both conventional and esoteric.

Centuries ago, horticulturists discovered pruning improved the yield of fruit trees and kept plants within their allotted orchard spaces. When my apples finally get large enough to need care, all I’ll need do in late winter is wait until I see the men with large orchards out with their shears and ladders and imitate.

Since the middle ages, people with formal gardens found the best species for hedges and drives, the ones that could be pruned to shape and continue to produce leaves. The most ambitious invented topiary. More mundanely, I’ve always had neighbors concerned with how to trim their privet and evergreens.

In my dry and windy yard, where concerns for formal shape are a luxury, I let shrubs take their natural form and only worry about dead wood and branches that slap me in the face. My work takes place now, when I know what’s dead, rather than late winter before the killing winds of early spring. I just hope opportunistic insects don’t invade the cuts.

The caryopteris are a group of shrubs that accommodated themselves to humans, but were never highly cultivated in northeast Asia. When Alexander von Bunge and Robert Fortune first found them, they believed them wild.

The blue-flowered shrubs weren’t hardy enough to survive French and British winters, nor dramatic enough to warrant greenhouse room. They died out and more vigorous specimens were discovered, but still carried warnings from William Robinson that they were "not quite hardy perhaps in all soils."

In their next transformation, after the hardier individuals survived being collected and moved about the globe, shrubs crossbred when species taken from Mongolia and Canton were grown near one another near Guildford in the early 1930's. Arthur Simmonds’ Caryopteris clandonensis dominated the market because it was hardier and more floriferous.

It since has undergone the next phase of domestication, the search for the best of the hybrid’s varying seedling. Mine came from one found in Longwood Gardens in 1981, a mere 148 years after Bunge found its mongholica parent and 137 after Fortune sent back the other, the incana known to Robinson.

My caryopteris has only known four phases of life with humans. It still hasn’t been modified enough to behave like a common garden shrub. When leaves first appear in late April, they emerge at the base. Then they form of silver-green sheath some inches back from the brownish-red stem tips, leaving a bare interior. Only now that the weather has cooled slightly with afternoon clouds and occasional rains have leaves filled in along the dark grey branches.

When I began cutting out the dead wood last week, the totally leafless stems at the bottom were quite gone, but many smaller stems were still pliable enough to suggest they were alive and, if winter never came, would eventually produce leaves, and possibly flowers. In a good year, they prosper; in a bad remain bare, dormant fingers overshadowing the flowers with their palings.

Garden writers have simplified the instructions for those who expect shrubs to be attractive all year. They tell buyers the plants are essentially herbaceous perennials that can be cut back severely in winter because the flowers only appear on new growth.

I suppose that would work, if one really knew in February what would survive April, or had faith all would be as expected. But in this unpredictable world, I fear preemptive action could be too shocking. And so, instead of a neat, densely flowered mound, I have a plant with a woody central section surrounded by younger, more uniform growth on stems that have reach far from the main stem. It’s also produced pups, either seedlings or suckers, that are blooming.

Most surprising, when I was removing the dead wood from the base, I discovered the second shrub I’d bought in 1997, the one that had died out in 2003, was putting out new growth. Appearances to the contrary, it hadn’t died, but only been sleeping for seven years.

Plants grown comfortable with pruning shears through centuries of co-existence are not the same as still half-feral ones that botanists can‘t even agree are members of the verbena or mint families. Only the nature we’ve created does as we expect. The rest is always a bit risky.

Notes:
Miller, Diana. "RHS Plant Trials and Assessments: Caryopteris," 2007, available on-line.

Robinson, William. The English Flower Garden, 1933 edition reprinted by Sagapress, Inc., 1984.

Photograph: Caryopteris ‘Longwood Blue,’ with old woody section rising above new; Jemez and wild trees in back; 14 August 2010.

Flowering Spurge

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, buddleia, bird of paradise, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, purple phlox, Sensation cosmos, zinnias; sweet corn for sale down the road.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, winterfat, whorled milkweed, leather-leaf globemallows, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, datura, bush morning glory, pale trumpets, clammy weed, stickleaf, Dutch, white prairie, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, goat’s head, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, pigweed, Russian thistle, goat’s beard, paper flower, spiny lettuce, horseweed, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, gumweed, Tahokia daisy, áñil del muerto seedlings; moss, mushrooms, crust active.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, blackberry lily, golden spur columbine, Hartweig evening primrose, squash, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Parker’s Gold yarrow, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, orange coneflower.

Looking east: Hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, coral bells, Jupiter’s beard, large-leaf soapwort, baby’s breath, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppy, reseeded morning glories, garlic chives, cut-leaf coneflower; buds on hosta, Autumn Joy sedum, hollyhock seedlings.

Looking south: Rugosa roses, rose of Sharon, Illinois bundle flower, sweet peas, tomatillos.

Looking west: Russian sage, caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, David phlox, flowering spurge, blue flax, sea lavender, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, purple ice flower, purple coneflower, Mönch aster.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum, tomato, pepper.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbirds, goldfinch, geckos, ladybug on ragweed, cabbage and sulfur butterflies, bees, dragonfly on dead hollyhock stalk, striped and brown grasshoppers, black harvester and small red ants, mosquitoes.

Weather: Rain Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, early Saturday morning; 13:44 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Flowering spurge is an obvious choice for people trying to grow native wildflowers. This time of year, the blue green plants are covered with white daisy-like flowers in heads that resemble baby’s breath.

In my yard, the perennial emerges the end of May. In mid to late June, a whorl of narrow, rounded leaves appears with a tiny set of yellow flowers in the center surrounded by five white leaves that function as petals. The rounded central green female flower extends out on a fine stem with its yellow stigmas spread wide until it falls over on the petals. The tiny yellow anthers still surround the base.

The white petals fall to ground, and the flower combination is replaced by a thin stem that branches to carry more terminal flowers. Each flower set is then replaced by another fork marked by a pair of leaves, "on through four, five, or rarely six generations" that last until the end of August.

I ordered two plants in the fall of 1997 from Racine, Wisconsin’s Milaeger Gardens, who described it as a prairie native. One survived the winter. While the species can vary, mine happens to match the description of the ones seen by John Hilty in Illinois.

Although it is reported in every state and province from the western prairies east, Euphorbia corollata is most commonly mentioned as a component of the dry prairies, oak savannahs, oak openings and oak barrens in the great lakes states.

In Michigan, the underlying sandy or gravelly land was created by glaciers. The grasslands spread during a warm, dry period some 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. When the climate grew wetter, fire maintained the prairie in places where poorer soils made oaks, pines and sassafras more vulnerable.

Like other members of the spurge family, it would have been tested for its utility. The white sap would have been found to be irritating, and possibly worse. Still, the Cherokee used the juice for skin eruptions in children and sore nipples.

The long yellowish taproot was deemed more useful. The bark that forms as it ages was used as a physic before breakfast by the Meskwaki of Wisconsin and the Ojibwa of Wisconsin, Michigan and Ontario. The northeastern Micmac used it an emetic. In 1828, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque reported it was used for "fevers and bowel complaints" by Indians in the south. By the 1870's, Robley Dunglison knew it as Indian physic.

Rafinesque thought it more reliable that the then common ipecac because "the action is always proportionate to the quantity taken." Three to tens grains purged; ten to twenty induced vomiting. More could cause a dangerous reaction.

When I read lists of medicinal plants and see so many used for elimination, it’s easy to conclude many plants cause allergic reactions because they weren’t meant to be eaten. Unfortunately, when people are dependent on gathered foods they’re more likely to eat something disagreeable and not all things can be expelled by the body.

It’s also easy to forget that, before Edison and Pasteur, before modern sanitation and storage techniques, running hot water, refrigeration and regulated stoves, there was always a risk that what one ate could be off in some way and had to be removed from one’s body as quickly as possible.

In pre-modern life, a knowledge and supply of purgatives was essential to survival.

Notes:
Cohen, J. G. "Natural Community Abstract for Oak-Pine Barrens," Michigan Natural Features Inventory, 2000, updated 2010.

_____. "Natural Community Abstract for Oak Openings," Michigan Natural Features Inventory, 2004.

Dunglison, Robley. A Dictionary of Medical Science, 1876.

Hilty, John. "Flowering Spurge," Illinois Wildflowers website

Lyon, Florence May. "A Contribution to the Life History of Euphorbia corollata," Botanical Gazette 25:418-426:1898; quotation on branching habit.

Milaeger Gardens. The Perennial Wishbook catalog, 1997 edition.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998; summarizes data from a number of ethnographies.

Rafinesque, C. S. Medical Flora, or Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America, 1828, republished by Henriette Kress on her Henriette’s Herbal website.

Photograph: Flowering spurge with elongating female flowers, 7 August 2010, after last Saturday morning’s rain.

Lamb's Quarter

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, roses of Sharon, buddleia, lilies, daylilies, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, Russian sage, purple phlox, Sensation cosmos, zinnias; green tomatoes and squash visible from road; cut alfalfa.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, winterfat, Queen Anne’s lace, whorled milkweed, leather-leaf globemallows, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white and yellow evening primroses, bindweed, datura, bush morning glory, stickleaf, Dutch, white prairie, and white sweet clovers, buffalo gourd, goat’s head, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, 5' pigweed common, Russian thistle, goat’s beard, hawkweed, paper flower, Santa Fe thistle, spiny lettuce, horseweed, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, gumweed, Tahokia daisy, sideoats grama; with rains, late summer plants began emerging including lamb’s quarter, new Russian thistles, clammy weed, purslane, ivy leaf morning glory and prostrate knotweed.

In my yard looking north: Miniature roses, blackberry lily, golden spur columbine, Harweig evening primrose, squash, nasturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Parker’s Gold yarrow, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, orange coneflower.

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, coral bells, Jupiter’s beard, coral beardtongue, large-leaf soapwort, baby’s breath, pink evening primrose, Saint John’s wort, reseeded morning glory, garlic chives; buds on hosta, Autumn Joy sedum, cut-leaf coneflower; ripening everbearing raspberries

Looking south: Blaze and rugosa roses, Illinois bundle flower, sweet peas, tomatillos.

Looking west: Caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, David phlox, white spurge, blue flax, sea lavender, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, purple coneflower; Mönch aster.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum, tomato.

Inside: Aptenia, zonal geraniums, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: Hummingbirds in pairs, geckos, sulphur butterfly, bees, grasshoppers, black harvester ants, explosion of small red ant hills.

Weather: More bad air; rain last night; 13:59 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: When writers try to imagine the life of hunter-gatherers, they usually are more interested in hunting. This not only reflects their readers’ interests, but the technology of spears is something that can be described and the excitement of the chase dramatized. The resulting meal can provide the festive background necessary for other parts of the narrative.

The only person I’ve read who captures the challenge of gathering to survive is Julian Steward. The Shoshoni speakers of the Great Basin steppes lived in an environment where the fall gathering of piñon nuts was nutritionally more important than communal rabbit hunts that didn’t occur every year and more reliable than game animals so rare they couldn’t provide enough skins to keep them clothed and shod.

During much of the year, nuclear families roamed alone seeking seeds protected by hard shells and small animals like mice, gophers, insects and lizards. In spring, after nature had dispersed the seeds, they turned to greens. If they were near a stream, they could forage for roots.

The "what" and "how" of survival were learned early. Steward says there were less than a hundred edible species in their range. More difficult was learning "where" and "when" a plant might be available. When rainfall varied by place and year, and seeds lay dormant in the soil, each child learned to be observant and draw conclusions.

The Española valley is more hospitable than the intermontane west, but rainfall is still erratic. This year’s wet winter and early spring meant there were greens early. However, the high temperatures of the past few weeks, both in the early morning and afternoon, shortened the blooming periods of forbs and turned grasses and shrubs brown. Before last weekend’s rains, traditional people would have been anxious.

When I went out in the mist last Sunday, the first newly emerged plant I saw was lamb’s quarter, growing in the biological crust on the flat land above the arroyo. The smooth stems, with their wax covered green leaves were no more than 6 inches high. They usually appear in my drive in early May, but rarely get much taller. The ones outside my window in northern New Jersey were 6 feet by mid-summer.

Lamb’s quarter’s an old world plant that probably crossed the ocean multiple time in seed stocks. Even today, the Henry Doubleday Research Association reported the black seeds in lots of clover, carrots, lettuce and wheat from England, Canada and Denmark.

The member of the goosefoot family was adapted by tribes in every part of the country as a green, one that was usually boiled. The leaves contain vitamin C and calcium. The only ones who ate the seeds rich in protein and vitamin A were in the west, the Hopi, Navajo, Paiute and some in Montana.

The annual has been eaten as far back as we know. The first confirmed instance was a handicapped young boy who’d been stabbed and placed in a Kayhausen peat bog in lower Saxony that tanned his skin, ate his bones and preserved the contents of his stomach. He’s been dated to 300 to 400 bc in an area that traded with Rome but still used iron tools.

The earliest farmers in central Europe spread the Bandkeramik culture up the Danube, then across a belt of fertile loess soils where they grew wheat, peas and lentils between 5400 bc and 4500 bc. Lamb’s quarter probably increased. The taproots do better on nitrogen rich, cultivated soils. One reason they’re so nutritious is their hairs absorb trace minerals that are passed through to the leaves and seeds.

Corrie Bakels found parched, unripened seed in the wheat chaff from Bandkeramik sites in Germany, which suggest it was a field weed removed when the grain was husked. She also discovered reports from three areas in the Netherlands with soil samples that were almost exclusively lamb’s quarter seed, both ripe and unripe, which she believes came from people cleaning the greens to eat, not as a crop, but as a gathered familiar.

While Chenopodium album is a recent arrival in the Americas, related plants in the genus arrived earlier. Owen Davis found the closely related amaranth and chenopods marked the appearance of modern plant communities in the Great Basin in the Pleistocene periods when the glaciers were receding.

Uncarbonized Chenopodim berlandieri seeds have been found at Cloudsplitter and Newt Kash rockshelters in eastern Kentucky, suggesting the plant was being domesticated east of the Mississippi around 1400 bc.

In México, berlandieri subspecies were cultivated as were quinoa and ambrosioides. The first continue to be grown as chia and huauzontle; the second was introduced from the Andes and used in Aztec religious ceremonies; apazote is still eaten in Mayan areas.

In early southwestern settlements, Chenopodium seed remains are found that are difficult to isolate from the more common amaranths, and disappear after the adoption of corn.

In this immediate area the alien lamb’s quarter’s too fussy to become a staple, and was not mentioned by the Tewa in 1916. In Frijoles Canyon on the Pajarito Plateau, only a few plants are found each year in late July. The only years I’ve seen many here were 1999 and 2001. I saw more turning burgundy in the autumns of 2006 and 2007 where my neighbor kept horses. In England Dirty Dick’s known for colonizing manure piles.

Last weekend, this cohabitant with the earliest farmers was startling in its brightness, a surprise, even if I was only gathering wool when I found it.

Notes:
Bakels, C. "Tracing Crop Processing in the Bandkeramik Culture," in Jane M. Renfrew, New Light on Early Farming: Recent Developments in Paleoethnobotany, 1991; the early neolithic sites were Beek-Molensteeg (one area) and Geleen-Haesselderveld (two areas).

Behre, Karl-Ernst. "Collected Seeds and Fruits from Herbs as Prehistoric Food," Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17:65-73:2008; on Kayhausen.

Bond, W., G. Davies, R. Turner. "The Biology and Non-Chemical Control of Fat-Hen (Chenopodium album L.)," Henry Doubleday Research Association website, November 2007.

Coile, Nancy C. and Carlos R Artaud. "Chenopodium ambrosioides L., (Chenopodiaceae): Mexican Tea, Wanted Weed?," Florida Department of Agriculture, Division of Plant Industry, Botanical Circular 33, 1997.

Davis, Owen K. "The Late Pleistocene Development of Sagebrush Steppe in the Eastern Great Basin," American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists annual meeting, 1994.

Dunmire, William M. and Gail D. Tierney. Wild Plants of the Pueblo Province, 1995.

Moerman, Dan. Native American Ethnobotany, 1998; summarizes data from a number of ethnographies.

Robbins, William Wilfred, John Peabody Harrington and Barbara Friere-Marreco. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.

Smith, Bruce D. "Eastern North America as an Independent Center of Plant Domestication," National Academy of Sciences Proceedings 103:12223–12228:2006.

Steward, Julian H. "The Great Basin Shoshonean Indians: An Example of a Family Level of Sociocultural Integration," in Theory of Cultural Change, 1965, condensed from "Basin-Plateau Sociopolitical Groups," Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, 1938.

Photograph: Lamb’s quarter growing on dark soil crust near the prairie arroyo, 25 July 2010.