Prostrate Knotweed

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, bird of paradise, silver lace vine, Japanese honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories nearly gone, sweet pea flourishing, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds, Maximilian sunflower; green pepper roasting done for year.

Outside the fences: Apache plume, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, yellow evening primrose, datura, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy-leaf morning glory, older pigweed turning brown, ragweed, Russian thistle, goats’ head, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, horseweed, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, gumweed, broom senecio, spiny lettuce, Tahokia daisy, purple, heath and golden hairy asters; milkweed leaves turning yellow, toothed spurge turning maroon.

In my yard looking north: Nasturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum, Crackerjack marigold.

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, large-leaf soapwort, scarlet flax, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, pink evening primrose, zinnias; Autumn Joy sedum leaves losing color.

Looking south: Blaze, floribunda and miniature roses, cypress vine.

Looking west: Russian sage, catmint, lady bells, individual David phlox flowers, calamintha, sheltered purple coneflower, Mönch aster.

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

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, monarch butterfly, wasps, black harvester and small red ants.

Weather: Rain Tuesday night; short thunderstorm Friday morning; temperatures in high 30's yesterday morning; 11:29 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Prostrate knotweed is one of those weeds that survive because it’s no where near as noxious as its peers. It’s not poisonous, doesn’t have thorns, and doesn’t take over the best watered soil - it’s just not worth the same effort I expend to control pigweed and Siberian elms.

The dark brown seeds lie buried just beneath the surface in winter when cool temperatures and dampness revoke their dormancy, leaving them ready to germinate when conditions improve. They say the annuals first appear looking like grass, but I never notice them until a few stems a couple inches long appear with their rounded, oval leaves spaced too far apart to cover the soil.

This summer I was removing the white taproots from the zinnia bed when I was preparing it for seed in late May. Those early plants probably had four sets of chromosomes and peaked early, before the summer heat reintroduced dormancy in unsprouted seeds and sent everything else into remission.

Come the monsoons, enough moisture penetrates the warm soil for a second wave to grow, this time the ones with six sets of chromosomes. When I went out to weed in late July, I saw plants had returned in the zinnia bed and new ones were growing along the nearby fence. I haphazardly pulled some, but left many in my pursuit of other enemies.

Then, as seems to happen every year, events overtook my resolutions and things were left to grow as they would in late summer. When I went out last weekend, the knotweeds in the zinnia bed were turning brown, while the light-green ones in the shade of the fence had grow erect and lacy.

Out in the drive, in front of the garage, the thick doilies I first noted the middle of August had waxed fat, with thick blue-green leaves, some with red lines. At the leaf joints, small stems held clusters of dark rose buds, maybe a sixteenth of an inch across. Some were parting to expose their stamens, while others remain closed, shaking the pollen within to fertilize themselves.

Useful as a capacity to waste no resources on petals to attract insects or variations in chromosome counts may be to survival, I suspect an ability pass unnoticed has been more important.

No one knows where Polygonum aviculare emerged, but its fossilized seeds have been found in northern European strata dated to the Cromerian warming period during the middle ice age between 866,000 and 478,000 years ago. Jonathan Sauer believes they were "native pioneers preadapted to join in the migrations of early humans as ruderal camp followers."

With the appearance of neolithic farmers, the ground hugging plant moved into the fields from central Germany northwest to Britain. Either weeds weren’t yet seen as problems, or the red stems were tolerated.

By the time iron age people were sacrificing a man at Thor’s Grove in Jutland around 400bc, the seeds were part of the Tollund grainery, included in the gruel of his last meal. Another member of the buckwheat family, Persicaria lapathifolia, seems to have been gathered deliberately, but archaeologists debate if the inclusion of prostate knotweed was accidental or intentional.

Some 700 years later and eleven miles to the east, another man was sacrificed who’s body was found near Grauballe in 1954. His last meal contained fragments of 63 grains, including prostrate knotweed, but no spring greens or late summer fruits. From that, Peter Glob has argued he probably was killed in some late winter ritual designed to speed the arrival of spring.

The late season food fed to both men was relatively dirty, filled with hairs and ergot, a fungus that infects one of their main crops, rye. The Graballe man’s skeleton showed signs of near starvation when he was young and recent calcium deficiencies. It may be he died in a year when food supplies were particularly low, and everything non-toxic was eaten. Glob indicated the condition of his teeth showed this wasn’t his usual fare.

Prostrate knotweed moved to the compacted pathways when it was ejected by more fastidious farmers and traveled west with the first settlers to New England where John Josselyn reported in 1672 that knot grass had "sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New-England."

It continued moving west, annoying people who wanted perfect lawns, but otherwise dispersing by seed or contaminated nursery pots. A century ago it was considered "a common dooryard weed at middle levels in the mountains" of New Mexico.

Sometimes, people who confronted it as a new plant would test it: the Chinese tried it as a dye, the Ramah Navajo used a warm infusion to treat stomach aches. In the late nineteenth century, there was a brief fad for Hemero Tea to treat asthma and bronchitis in Austria and Germany.

But as usually happens with familiarity, most soon learned to ignore it.

In oblivion there is success for the meek.

Notes:Coward, Fiona, Stephen Shennan, Sue Colledge, James Conolly, and Mark Collard. "The Spread of Neotlithic Plant Economies from the Near East to Northwest Europe: A Phylogenetic Analysis, Journal of Archaeological Science 35:42-56:2008.

Glob. Peter Vilhelm. The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved, 2004.

Josselyn, John. New England’s Rarities Discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents and Plants of That Country, 1672, reprinted by University of Michigan, University Library with 1865 notes by Edward Tuckerman.

Meerts, Pierre. "An Experimental Investigation of Life History and Plasticity in Two Cytotypes of Polygonum aviculare L. Subsp. aviculare That Coexist in an Abandoned Arable Field, Oecologia 92:442-449:1992; on chromosomes.

Rafinesque, C. S. Medical Flora, volume 2, 1830; on China

Sauer, Jonathan D. Plant Migration: The Dynamics of Geographic Patterning in Seed Plant Species, 1988

Taylor, Timothy. The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death, 2004; on ergot.

Uphof, J. C. T. Dictionary of Economic Plants, 1968 edition; on Hemero Tea.

Vestal, Paul A. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho, 1952.

Wooten, Elmer Otis and Paul Carpenter Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915.

Photograph: Prostate knotweed, much enlarged, in my drive, 3 October 2010.

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.