Drought and Snakeweed

Weather: Dry, with only a wetting on 9/4.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid tea roses, buddleia, silver lace vine, trumpet creeper, datura, morning glories, sweet pea, alfalfa, Russian sage, annual four o’clock, bouncing Bess, Sensation cosmos, African marigolds, coreopsis, zinnias.

Beyond the walls and fences: Goat’s head, bindweed, green-leaf five-eyes, yellow and white prairie evening primroses, leather leaf globe mallow, green amaranth, pigweed, native sunflower, gumweed, goldenrod, áñil del muerto, Tahoka daisy, golden hairy asters.

In my yard: Yellow potentilla, garlic chives, calamintha, lead wort plant, larkspur, winecup mallow, pink evening primrose, scarlet flax, Maximilian sunflowers, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, chocolate flower, blanket flower, bachelor button, Mönch aster, yellow cosmos.

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragon, marigold, gazania.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds, geckos, cabbage butterflies, bumble bees, grasshoppers, ants.

Weekly update: Drought is a progressive condition, or perhaps I should say, a retrogressive one. If the intervals between dry spells aren’t long enough for vegetation to recover, each one makes conditions worse.

Say, for example, a drought kills 5% of the vegetation, and 2% recovers. When the next drought destroys another 5%, that’s 8% gone.

New Mexico had severe droughts in the 1930s and again in the 1950s. The Santa Cruz reservoir went dry in 1956. More dry years occurred in the late 1970s. It may have been wet after that, but damaged grasslands didn’t recover enough to survive the recent bad years.

My front yard was in poor condition when I came here in 1991. All the slope supported was ring muhly grass, winterfat and broom snakeweed.

When we had some dry years around 2007, the ring muhly died. Broom snakeweed colonized areas where water seeped from beds I was watering. I left the upland undisturbed, and so it remained impervious to weed seeds.

We had a very bad year in 2012, when water was severely rationed by the ditch managers. Needle grass on local grasslands suffered. Russian thistles invaded the next spring. The land to the south and west of me was devastated for the first time since I’ve been here.

Last year, the carcasses blew in the wind, and water was still rationed. However, there was just enough rain to revive the dead crowns.

Nothing much happened in my yard in 2014, but we had rain this year in late spring and mid-summer. My previously barren ground sprouted Russian thistles everywhere. They didn’t come from those carcasses, but from seed blown off the land to the south and west. It had been an aerial assault.

Elsewhere, broom snakeweed appeared everywhere in late summer on hillsides that had lost some of their cover. Some had continued to be grazed a few weeks a year by horses

but other parts haven’t been grazed in the last 20 plus years.

Some experts point to the yellow flowered shrub as an indicator of land abuse. Others note, when it’s invading it slows or prevents soil erosion. It’s part of nature’s repair kit when things go awry.

Notes: Broom snakeweed is Gutierrezia sarothrae. Russian thistles are Salsola pestifer. Ring muhly is Muhlenbegia torreyi. Winterfat is Eurotia lanata. Needle grass is Stipa comata.

Tirmenstein, D. "Gutierrezia sarothrae," 1999, in United States Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System, available on-line; summarizes research on the composite.

Photographs:
1. Broom snakeweed in my yard, 12 September 2015.

2. Snakeweed floret, 12 September 2015.

3. Front yard before it was destroyed by drought, 26 August 2006. The purple haze is ring muhly grass. The grass in front is black grama. Winterfat is the gray shrub in back.

4. Front yard two years later, 2 August 2008. The gray rings in front are the dead muhly. The rest is winterfat.

5. Local prairie after the drought killed the needle grass (the black clumps) and Russian thistles had invaded (the green), 24 August 2013.

6. Local prairie with the needle grass reviving, and the Russian thistle carcasses blown away, 20 March 2014.

7. My front yard this year, after those seeds from the local prairie landed, 6 September 2015. The rust is Russian thistle, the yellow is broom snakeweed, and the gray is winterfat.

8. Area hillside covered with broom snakeweed, 10 September 2015.

9. Arroyo flood plain across the road from the hill in #8, 10 September 2015.

10. Same flood plain as #9 before most recent dry years, 2 November 2011.

Russian Thistle

What’s happening: Ice forming on roses in the back drip line; most of the blackberry lily seeds have disappeared.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens, some Apache plume, yuccas, some Japanese honeysuckle, pyracantha, red hot poker, grape hyacinth, Jupiter’s beard, large-leaved soapwort, sea pink, hollyhock, oriental poppy, blue flax, yellow and pink evening primroses, vinca, gypsum phacelia, tumble mustard, snakeweed, dandelion, anthemis, coreopsis, perky Sue, Shasta daisy, black-eyed Susan, strap leaf aster leaves; June, pampas, brome, cheat and base of needle grasses; rose stems and young chamisa branches.

What’s grey, blue-grey or grey-green: Piñon, four-winged salt bush, buddleia, pinks, snow-in-summer, loco weed, yellow alyssum, stick leaf, western stickseed, winterfat, golden hairy aster leaves.

What’s red/turning red: Privet, cholla, prickly pear, small-leaved soapwort, beards tongues, coral bells leaves.

What’s yellow/turning yellow: Arborvitae; globe and weeping willow branches.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern.

Animal sightings: The night after the snow fell a mouse was on my kitchen counter after I went to bed looking for food.

Weather: First snow Thursday; returned as fog this morning; 9:45 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Tuesday morning I could smell wood smoke when I walked out to my car. Across the river I could see dark smoke rising from someone burning. I’m not a good enough woodsmen to recognize the burning wood, but I can often tell when some one’s firing Russian thistle.

Most weeds produce a grey-white smoke. When Russian thistles ignite, which they do with a great whoosh, the smoke turns dark, with a touch of fatty yellow. The fumes are so acrid they attack my throat and make it difficult to breathe. My hair reeks until it’s washed.

When it grows in saline environments, Salsola tragus sequesters the salt it absorbs in vacuole sacs in its leaves. When it burns, the sodium is converted to carbonate of soda. If the soil is more normal, the alkaline ashes instead contain a carbonate of potash, itself a form of potassium.

Na₂CO₃, better known as washing soda, is used to bleach linen, for making soap and as the flux is manufacturing glass. The origins of glass making are lost in prehistory: Roman tradition gave credit to the Phoenicians, while the earliest evidence of a fully realized industry has been recovered from iron age Tell Amarna in Egypt dated around 1350 bc. The latter used soda from Lake Natron, while people living along the modern Syrian coast are the ones credited with discovering how to extract the compound from seaside plants.

The Romans mass produced glass, especially in Sidon in modern Lebanon where someone introduced glass blowing during the time of Augustus (31 bc–14 ad). The Romans later took glass making to Valencia and Murcia in Spain, areas conquered by the Umayyads of Syria in 714.

By the time Renaissance industrial demand increased, farmers around Cartagena in Murcia and Alacant on the Valencian coast planted barrilla, which was burned in pits covered with earth where the sodium carbonate had to be broken from the walls with hammers.

The most likely plants used by the Spanish were Salsola soda, Salsola kali, and Salsola sativa, now classed as Halogeton sativus.

The idea of burning the annual chenopods spread north to France where Salsola kali and our Russian thistle, there called soude épineuse or thorny soda, were used to produce blanquette around Montpellier, between Frontignan and Aiguemortes. The plants weren’t seeded like they were in Spain, but were burned in heaps in trenches for 8 or 9 days in late summer. The soda formed an "adhesive, almost vitreous mass" that remained red hot. When the blanquette cooled, it hardened and turned black. Water was then used to extract it from the residue.

The best always came from the Levant and was used to produce the clear cristallo glass made for Venice at Murano. The soda from Spain produced a bluish glass, while that from France was greenish.

The demand for organic sources for glass making declined after Nicolas Leblanc patented a process to produce sodium carbonate from salt, sulfuric acid, limestone and coal in 1791. In 1861, Ernest Solvay substituted ammonia for the acid. Mass production and a taste for large windows followed.

However, the need to burn weeds persisted. People here don’t burn Russian thistles because of some ties to a coastal Spain they never knew, nor have then reinvented something in the face of recurring circumstances. Instead, burning’s a relic from the time before the Phoenicians when the transformative power of fire was culturally important for both pragmatic and philosophical reasons.

Glass is a pyramid of fires. Natural glass is formed when fire heats the underlying sand to produce obsidian. The soda that lowers the melting temperature comes from burning weeds. The lime that stabilizes the soda-silica compound often comes from burning shells or limestone. Man-made glass forms when quartz granules are burned with soda and lime.

Science has demystified fire by calling it heat. Urban life and, more recently, anti-burning ordinances have done much to eliminate fire from our inherited tool kit, but it persists here in the Española valley in the varieties of smoke that greet one in the morning.

Burning is still a primordial ritual that inspires fear when thistles ignite, even if the curiosity to rake through the ashes has been lost.

Notes: Glass color doesn’t come from the soda, but from mineral impurities or additives in the mix.

Chaptal, Jean-Antoine-Claude. "Blanquette" in Chemistry Applied to Arts and Manufactures, volume 2, 1807.

Guibourt, Nicolas Jean Baptiste Gaston. Work near Cherbourg published in Journal de Chimie Medicale in March 1840 and reported as "Analysis of the Ashes of the Salsola tragus" in The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, July 1840.

Kauffman, C. H. "Barilla" in The Dictionary of Merchandise, and Nomenclature in All Languages, 1805.

Nesbitt, Alexander and Henry James Powell. "History of Glass Manufacture" in Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911.

Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus). Naturalis Historia, translated by John F. Healy as Natural History: A Selection, 1991.

Photograph: Russian thistle just after it ignited in the gathering mist before the snow, 16 December 2010; winterfat in back is not burning; all the flame and smoke are from a single plant.

Russian Thistle

What’s growing in the area: Globe willows are a brighter green. Apple trees were pruned in the main orchard this past week, the week before holy week sometime after the new moon. At least one field’s been tilled; many have been out cleaning dead leaves and weeds.
In my yard: Iris emerging; hyacinths up with buds visible. New growth on rockrose, snapdragon, coral beardtongue, bouncing Bess, golden spur columbine, pink evening primrose, Saint John’s wort, flax, hollyhocks, winecup, autumn joy sedum, tansy, Mount Atlas daisy, chrysanthemum, anthemis, hairy golden aster. Buds fattening on forsythia, spirea, cherry, and peach. Rose stems still green. Some grass blades up which could be cheat grass or Russian thistle; new growth in June grass clumps.
What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium, kalanchoë, bougainvilla
Animal sightings: Quail took off from area by the garage; small birds flittered near cholla.
Weather: Warm afternoons melted remaining snow, even though morning temperatures were still below freezing; high winds Friday; 11:50 hours of sunlight today.
Weekly update: High winds yesterday and the day before insured another good season for tumbleweeds.
Russian thistles produce their seed in late summer, but it isn’t ready to germinate until it finishes ripening in early spring. After last fall’s frosts slowed photosynthesis to reveal red betalains in formerly dark green stems, plants formed scar tissue near their bases with abscisic acid, which allowed this past week’s winds to break the half-inch woody stems, pick-up the dried spheres, and scatter shiny, dark seeds and small branches until the missiles hit fences or passing motorists.
Nature spent the past few weeks preparing friable surface soil when snow melt and rain couldn’t penetrate the freeze line and evaporated into the air. The wind nicely covered the seed with loose dirt it picked up crossing barren fields.
In 1893, Lyster Dewey traced this spiny Eurasian pest to a shipment of contaminated flax seed sent to Bon Homme County, South Dakota, in 1886. It took a few years to adapt to the new environment, then Russian thistle spread quickly on overgrazed range lands. McKibben found it in Lamy in 1894, the same year Southwestern Farm and Orchard warned readers it had been spotted in Santa Fe. Lamy was the main junction for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad. The weed was widespread in the state by 1915.
The weed, now called Salsola tragus, is harder to eradicate than it was introduce. Indeed, during the droughts of the depression the USDA promoted the plant for animal feed, since this member of the goosefoot family is high in protein and carbohydrates. Researchers found when it first sprouted and still resembled grass it was fair forage. It remained palatable while it bloomed and could be cut as hay. However, once the papery green bracts turned pink, the soft leaves withered, and were replaced by sets of three sharp, hard spines that protected it from grazing until the rains and snows of winter resoftened the stalks. During this phase they recommended ranchers could chop it to mix it with alfalfa for fodder.
It would be nice if you could simply set fire to an infested field of bushes ranging from 2" to 6' across, but the leafless branches enclose air pockets that make it hard to ignite. Most of my neighbors go out in fall or early spring to gather plants into huge piles they let settle for a few days. Then the towering smoke is mustard grey and smells from sodium carbonate.

Usually they yank the bushes and thereby drop a few seeds into the newly disturbed ground. I use brush cutters, then handle the 4' high balls by the stem stubs because the thorns irritate my hands. If the plants are still green, I let them dry a few days, then flatten them with a shovel or board to eliminate as much air as possible. They still suffocate when they burn.

One year I tried a herbicide. It took several applications and then the plants rotted, fouling the air with a different smell, before leaving carcasses that still had to be removed. Another year I tried a weed eater early in the season, only to discover the ribbed stalks sent out long branches along the ground, below the level of the machine’s nylon line.

Finally I let nature handle the mess it created. Even though the seedlings aggressively put down taproots before they start to grow, they can’t handle competition. When too many seeds sprout, each grows only a few inches high. Since it’s an annual, this meant if I let other, less noxious weeds grow, they eventually would squeeze it out.

All I do now is make sure flying bushes stay on the other side of my fences and let my neighbors keep the problem they perpetuate.

Notes:California Department of Food and Agriculture. "Russianthistle or Common Russianthistle," Encycloweedia website, edited by B.Ohlendorf.

Dewey, L. H. The Russian Thistle and Other Troublesome Weeds in the Wheat Region of Minnesota and North and South Dakota, 1893.

Forbes, Adam C. and Kelly W. Allred. "An Investigation of Salsola L. (Chenopodiaceae) in New Mexico," The New Mexico Botanist, 6 July 1999.

United States Department of Agriculture. Forrest Service, Range Plant Handbook, 1937, republished by Dover Publications, 1988.

Young, James A. and Raymond A. Evans. "Germination and Establishment of Salsola in Relation to Seedbed Environment. I. Temperature, Afterripening, and Moisture Relations of Salsola Seeds as Determined by Laboratory Studies," Agronomy Journal 64:214-218:1972.

Photograph: Russian Thistles clustered at a barbed wire fence, 14 March 2008.