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.

Nicotiana

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, bird of paradise, buddleia peaked, silver lace vine, Japanese honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, sweet pea, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds, Maximilian sunflower.

Outside the fences: Apache plume, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, yellow evening primrose, datura, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy-leaf morning glory, stickleaf, white sweet clover, toothed spurge, pigweed, ragweed, Russian thistle, goats’ head, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, horseweed, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers peaked, gumweed, broom senecio, Tahokia daisy, purple, heath and golden hairy asters.

In my yard looking north: Nasturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum, Crackerjack marigold; leaves turning yellow on Lapins cherry.

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hollyhock, winecup, large-leaf soapwort waning, Shirley poppy, scarlet flax, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, zinnias, tansy.

Looking south: Blaze and miniature roses, cypress vine; some orange red on spirea leaves.

Looking west: Russian sage, catmint, lady bells, David phlox bedraggled, calamintha, purple coneflower, Mönch aster; flowering spurge and skunkbush leaves turning yellow-orange.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, gecko, cabbage butterfly on purple asters, bee on hollyhock, wasp on blanket flower, black harvester and small red ants.

Weather: Morning temperatures in upper 40's; a little rain Friday night; 11:44 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: I do wish, when I find something that grows, nurserymen would stop trying to improve it.

Nicotiana alata has been on the betterment list, almost since it was introduced from an area of Brazil being settled by Germans in the 1820's and described from a specimen in the Berlin botanical garden in 1830. It was fragrant, but two to three feet tall, and inclined to collapse from the weight of its greenish flowers, which only opened after sundown.

It begged for improvement. By 1912, William Setchell believed the garden flower, alternately called Nicotiana affinis or Nicotiana alata grandiflora, was a larger flowered selection. In 1916, Percy Ricker questioned if the nightshade species itself was even in cultivation.

Help had arrived when Louis Forget sent another species, found primarily in the mountainous region of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul states in southern Brazil, to Henry Sander, the well-connected German-born British orchid importer.

Italians had begun settling the Serra Gaúcha highlands in 1875, and this species, like alata, had adapted by abandoning its rocky outcrops in distant canyons for the surer environment along roads and fallow fields. They haven’t yet met in Brazil, but researchers believe that, as roads continue to expand and the plants’ ranges draw closer, the time’s approaching when some large hawkmoth will take pollen from a perennial alata and deposit it on an annual forgetiana to produce a viable hybrid.

Man couldn’t wait. Nicotiana needed immediate improvement. The influential Alice Morse Earle had complained in 1901 that spent flowers stank the morning after. A new cross was introduced in 1905 with promotions reminiscent of today’s product roll outs. The hybrid sanderae was described in William Robinson’s weekly garden journal with a testimonial by the president of the Royal Horticultural Society, Trevor Lawrence, while the species forgetiana was formally baptized by the keeper of Kew Herbarium, William Botting Hemlsey, in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine.

Sanderae was praised for its compact habit and ability to withstand drought. Unfortunately, while its parent was brilliant red, it also had no detectable fragrance. In its native habitat, forgetiana’s shorter funnels attract hummingbirds, not the hawkmoths that favor alatas.

The conflicting demands for fragrance and dwarfness in increasingly smaller, suburban gardens led to a number of varieties that came and went before I bought my first Nikki White in Michigan in 1985. My only requirement was that a bedding plant survive transplantation, and this one produced five-petaled flowers resembling small petunias all summer. Enough to want more.

I was able to buy red and white Nikkis grown from Pan American seed until 1990, when Floranova’s Domino Red became the only plant available. Thompson and Morgan claimed it was a "marked improvement over older F₁" hybrids because it was neater and nearly in flower when planted out. The latter is good for growers, and Floranova claims its improvements have made nicotiana an accepted bedding plant.

Fine, but Domino didn’t do as well in my garden as had Nikki.

Ornamental tobaccos have been scarce in New Mexico. I bought some unnamed varieties from the local hardware that bloomed in 2002 and 2003. Then, in 2004 White Domino was all that was available. It didn’t last the summer. The few Hummingbirds that survived in 2006 went in and out of bloom. They were abandoned by Ball in 2009.

This year, I saw some Perfume Reds, another variety released by Floranova, in a garden store in Albuquerque. They had shrunk to 12" plants dense with large, sticky leaves and upward facing flowers that were supposed to be fragrant and require no maintenance. I have no idea if they have an aroma - I rarely bend to their level. They don’t greet me like chocolate flowers or David phlox.

However, they have bloomed all summer with a deep, alluring color. Occasionally, their throats, surrounded by lighter color circlets inherited from forgetiana, reach for the sun That’s enough.

Please, no more improvements. Let me enjoy.

Notes:
Earle, Alice Morse. Old Time Gardens, 1901; she said that while affinis had a "honey sweetness" at night, "you will be glad it withholds its perfume by day."

Hemsley, William Botting. "Nicotiana forgetiana," Curtis' Botanical Magazine, plant 8006, 1905.

Ippolito, Anthony, G. Wilson Fernandes, and Timothy P. Holtsford. "Pollinator Preferences for Nicotiana alata, N. forgetiana, and Their F₁ Hybrids," Evolution 58:2634-44:2004.

Link, Johann Heinrich Friedrich and Christoph Friedrich Otto. Icones Plantarum Rariorum Horti Regii Botanici Berolinensis, 1830, on alata.

Ricker, P. L. "Nicotiana," in Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, volume 4, 1916.

Robinson, William. The Garden, 7 January 1905.

Setchell, William Albert. Studies in Nicotiana, 1912.

Thompson and Morgan. The Seed Catalogue, 1986.

Photograph: Red Perfume nicotiana, 26 September 2010, with sun illuminating the funnel and recessed stamens.

African Marigold

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, bird of paradise, buddleia peaked, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, sweet pea, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds; alfalfa growing; catalpa leaves turning brown.

Outside the fences: Apache plume, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, yellow evening primroses, datura, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy-leaf morning glory, stickleaf, white sweet clover, prostrate knotweed, toothed spurge, pigweed, ragweed, Russian thistle, goats’ head, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, spiny lettuce, horseweed, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, gumweed, broom senecio, Tahokia daisy, purple, heath and golden hairy asters; yellow aspens can be seen in far mountains.

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 waning, Shirley poppy, scarlet flax, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, garlic chives, zinnias, Maximilian sunflower, tansy; oriental poppies have new leaves.

Looking south: Blaze and miniature roses, cypress vine.

Looking west: Russian sage, catmint, lady bells, David phlox bedraggled, calamintha, lead wort, purple ice flower, purple coneflower, Mönch aster.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana.

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, pomegranate.

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

Weather: Hard rain Wednesday; 11:59 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Once you’ve been close to a marigold, you swear you’d know them anywhere.

Every phase is distinctive. The dark tubular seeds with their sharp points are recognizable even when seedsmen remove the long tan fish tails.

The first, long narrow leaves may look like other seedlings, but they quickly put out two sets of opposing leaves with serrated edges. The plants grow into dark green bushes that occasionally turn maroon when temperatures fall.

Buds rise above the mass on tapering stems that feel hollow. The outer green sepals open into fluted urns that hold petals even after they’ve change into seeds. This calyx winters over waiting for someone to crush it and release its holdings to the soil. Even the next spring the remains retain their strong odor.

The composite flowers are most memorable of all. There are the common bedding plants, the dwarf French varieties derived from Tagetes patula, with variations of gold, yellow and red in single and double flowers in flat, rounded and crested forms. For the more daring with large yards, the tall Africans have monolithic heads of orange, gold and yellow.

The greatest number of Tagetes species exist in south central México where, long before the Spanish appeared, local people cultivated double cempoalxocnitl for use in late summer and early fall festivals. An incense burner in the shape of the rain goddess Chalchiuhtlicue from the middle 1400's fourth temple layer of Templo Mayor in old Tenochtitlán is adorned with four African marigold flowers. They may be heavily stylized, but there’s no question they are the modern Tagetes erecta.

Another effigy vessel from roughly the same period from the neighboring Tlatelolco temple dressed the maize goddess Chicomecoatl in a girdle of corn alternating with cempoalxocnitl. The marigold heads are complete, three-dimensional representations, less formalized and even more recognizable.

If African marigolds are so easy to identify, even in heavily abstracted stone, you’d think I’d have known I was growing them this summer. After all, I scattered the annual seeds May 31 and saw the first seedlings June 12.

But then, most people have no trouble growing marigolds and so would entertain no doubts. I saw a long row of French ones edging a truck garden the middle of August, and an orange row behind a fence the next day. A week ago, a patula rose several feet from a wall planter down the road into a large mound of motley bronze. Yesterday, I could see a row of orange and yellow Africans behind a stucco wall near the village.

My seeds, however, rarely germinate. The only year I truly succeeded was 2006. This year, I decided the problem was the thieving harvester ants and I would attack their hills from the time I planted seeds until I saw some plants. I dutifully sprinkled their holes with poison every time I saw activity, even though I knew I was only killing some workers. At least I kept their numbers down.

Unfortunately, I also planted yellow cosmos in the same area I planted my marigolds, and I couldn’t tell the seedlings apart. As the plants grew taller, I thought the bushier ones were marigolds, but I remembered one year my cosmos were also tall and bushy.

Frustrated by my wavering "is it or isn’t it" state, I went out about a month ago and rubbed one of the leaves of the suspected marigold, sure the smell test would be decisive. Nothing. Since many plants don’t produce aromas in this dry environment, I held on to hope I’d finally found the secret to growing marigolds, even though the evidence pointed to cosmos.

Then buds appeared the first week of September, only they were narrow, small teardrops, neither the hardened glistening balls of cosmos nor the long beads of marigolds. Only last Sunday did the first petals, folded on themselves like tortillas, began to expand into round tubes that had the color of lime.

I went out again and looked closely at the leaves. Those of the cosmos are fingers cut from a single piece, while the marigold has discrete stems lined with opposing pairs of narrow, double-edged knives no different than the first true leaves. From above, in mass, however, they still look alike.

More petals have since opened, moving from the outer edge to the center, so the flower looks more like a semi-double yellow marigold about 2' high. It could be the vagaries of the season that produced such a small specimen, or it may be random genetics. Crackerjack marigolds were bred by Bodger Seeds in the 1950's, and marketed by Burpee in 1958. The unpatented seeds were taken up by others, and are available today from a number of companies.

Like any open-pollinated plant, no matter how stable, the occasional seed will revert to the single species form. The Aztec knew this. They told Bernardino de.Sahagún the large ones were female, and the small ones with "just a single flower." were male.

Not that that helped anyone very much. The Spanish are probably the only people in the world who ever saw a marigold and forgot it. When the seeds were taken to the west coast of India, the bright colors were welcomed as a cheaper, fuller substitute for calendula in Hindu public and private rituals. By the time the British arrived, genda phool was "the most highly prized of all Indian flowers."

The Spanish, however, saw nothing. The conquistadores simply sent seeds home and forget them. They probably landed in Seville, the port for the Indies and earlier caliphate capital, and were taken to Tunis, the Islamic center on the southern Mediterranean coast where they naturalized. When Charles V took his grandfather’s wars against the Moors there in 1535, he brought home a new flower, flos africanus.

No one since has forgotten them, though they may have disparaged them. Some sixty years later, John Gerard described plants in England "beset with leaves consisting of many particulars, indented about the edges," with "long cups or husks" that hold the petals of a color not possible to describe, and a "most ranke and unwholesome smell."

You know, sight unseen, that’s a marigold.

Notes:
Anonymous. "Hindoo Plant Lore," The Indian Gardener, 26 May 1885.

Gerard, John. Gerard’s Herball 1597; reprinted as Leaves from Gerard’s Herball, 1969, from a 1929 edition by Marcus Woodward.

Heyden, Doris. "Symbolism of Ceramics" in The Aztec Templo Mayor, proceedings of a 1983 Dumbarton Oaks symposium edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone, includes photographs of the two effigy vessels.

Sahagún, Bernardino de. Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva España, c.1577, translated as Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book XI - Earthly Things by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson, 1963.

Taylor, Judith M. Taylor. "The Marigold in California: a Supplement," horthistoria website has Burpee’s dates for Crackerjack. Bodger’s websites takes credit for developing Crackerjacks, but give no dates.

Photograph: Crackerjack marigold, 19 September 2010, when the petals are revealed in the calyx but haven’t yet unfurled.

Tomato

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, bird of paradise, buddleia, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds; Virginia creeper beginning to turn red.

Outside the fences: Apache plume, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, white and yellow evening primroses, datura, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy-leaf morning glory, stickleaf, white sweet clover, prostrate knotweed, toothed spurge, pigweed, ragweed, Russian thistle, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, spiny lettuce, horseweed, golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, gumweed, broom senecio, Tahokia daisy, purple and heath asters.

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

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hosta, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, Jupiter’s beard, large-leaf soapwort, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppy, scarlet flax, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, garlic chives, zinnias, Maximilian sunflower; buds on tansy.

Looking south: Blaze, rugosa and miniature roses, sweet pea.

Looking west: Russian sage, caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, David phlox, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, lead wort, purple ice flower, purple coneflower, Mönch aster.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, snapdragon, nicotiana, sweet alyssum, tomatoes, peppers..

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, small geckos, bumble bee, wasps, black harvester and small red ants.

Weather: Morning temperatures in the 40's; last rain 08/30/09; 12:18 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Dedicated gardeners are optimists blessed with conveniently selective memories.

My uphill neighbor put in a vegetable garden two years ago. Last year he didn’t bother because he remembered the quail had pecked, not eaten, but pecked all his tomatoes. This year, he was willing to try onions, but was still cautious, even though the birds had shifted their grounds early last summer. Alas, he remembers the wrong things.

In contrast, my friend in Pojoaque has complained all year about how poorly her tomatoes were doing. When I said at least this year was better than last, she looked at me like I lived in another universe. Last year was great, she said, but this year the nights had never gotten warm and tomatoes are tropical plants that need heat.

I mentioned those weeks in July that were so miserable because the nights never cooled off. I didn’t add I thought tomatoes came from the Andes and needed cool evenings. She replied, it never got above 60 on her porch and she’d checked.

I looked back at my notes. She was remembering May and June when morning temperatures were cooler than last year, in the 40's and low 50's. In fact, neither I nor my neighbors put our plants out until the end of May, at least two weeks later than usual.

However, I remembered the temperature inversions that began the middle of June just before forest fires fed on the heat and dry air in the Jemez. There were mornings in mid-July temperature didn’t fall below 66 on my porch and days that were in the 90's.

As often happens with disagreements between friends, we were both sort of right, and both a bit wrong. The tomato genus, Lycopersicum, did emerge in the Andes about 7 million years ago, and the modern species began to appear there less than a million years ago. One, cerasiforme, began spreading north into central America and México where it was domesticated, probably in modern Puebla or Veracruz. It had already hybridized with other species, contained the large- fruit fw2.2 gene, and developed an ability to fertilize itself when it migrated beyond the range of its pollinators.

Once the Spanish sent the domesticated esculentum descendants back to Europe, breeders there selected seeds to improve taste and increase size. In 1914, Bert Croft noticed a plant in his Florida field that formed a bush with terminal flowers that produced early fruit that ripened at one time. The recessive self-pruning gene has been exploited since to produce determinate plants for commercial harvesting.

Plants advertised as indeterminate continue to grow, bloom along the stem and produce fruit until they’re killed by frost.

Despite all the breeding efforts, most tomatoes still need nighttime temperatures above 55 to bloom and set fruit, like my friend believes. However, like I thought, many also fail to set when daytime temperatures get above 85. In addition, the tender perennials need humidity.

Memories are only tangentially tied to reality. My friend spent much of her life in Mississippi and Arkansas, where everything is warm and moist. Her earliest food memories are probably of determinate varieties that failed to produce if conditions were bad early in the season, but were cultivated anyway by home canners.

I grew up in cooler Michigan where the only tomatoes I ate came from grocers. In the early 1970's I tried growing cherry tomatoes in a pot in northern Ohio and found the skins so thick they were inedible. I remembered and didn’t try again.

Then, in 1995, we were invaded by grasshoppers. Another neighbor said the only things they hadn’t eaten in his yard were the tomatoes. I reasoned, since they were members of the nightshade family, maybe they were a deterrent. I went to the local hardware and bought all the plants they had. The only variety that survived was Patio Prize.

I figured my plants failed because it was late June when I bought them: they had suffered in the store and weren’t ready for the heat. The next year I bought more. I didn’t care if they bore fruit, only that they produced great quantities of smelly leaves. I had a little success with Early Girl and Sweet 100; the rest died.

I didn’t know Early Girl was introduced in 1975 at the insistence of Joe Howland, who wanted a tomato that would grow where he lived in Reno, Nevada, where daily temperatures range more than here. I also didn’t know modern cherry tomatoes got their impetus from two Israelis, Haim Rabinowich and Nachum Kedar, who were trying to find something that would live in their environment in the 1970's, about the time I gave up on them in Ohio.

All I knew or remembered was that Sweet 100 was the most successful in my yard. Unfortunately, I rarely can buy them: growers are forever looking for improvements, and their Supersweet 100, Sweet 1000, and Sweet Million stop growing in July and don’t resume with the monsoons.

I turned to chemical herbicides for the grasshoppers and abandoned the tomato bed to grass. When I tried placing bedding plants in what seemed a better location, they failed.

This year I found Sweet 100's again. I put two in the blue grama, and four in the other location. Only the ones in grass started blooming in August and now bear sun-warmed fruit I eat when I notice one the right shade of red.

My friend is already planning next year’s garden where the tomatoes will only grow in pots. Even though her "cherry tomatoes are doing good and taste good," her Early Girls "haven't done much, few fruit, what turned red was good."

Memories condition what we experience. For me, who never knew a garden tomato, the season lingers into Indian summer. For her, the nights are already too cold to do anything but forget.

Notes:Jenkins, J. A. "The Origin of the Cultivated Tomato," Economic Botany 2:379-392:1948.

Kalman, Matthew. "A Tiny Country’s Big Success with Tech Transfer," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 October 2008. Hebrew University licensed Rabinowich and Kedar’s genetic discoveries to two Israeli companies. One was purchased by Vilmorin, who often is associated with Sweet 100.

Nesbitt, T. Clint and Steven D. Tanksley. "Comparative Sequencing in the Genus Lycopersicon: Implications for the Evolution of Fruit Size in the Domestication of Cultivated Tomatoes," Genetics 162:365-379:2002.

Smith, Andrew F. The Tomato in America, 1994. Croft’s discovery was marketed by C. D. Cooper of Fort Lauderdale as Cooper Special.

Tracy, Dick. "Enduring Girl Short-Season Tomato Has Been Popular Since its '70s Debut," 6 June 1998. Early Girl was developed by Seminsis and licensed to PetoSeed who marketed it through Burpee. Pan American Seed’s owner bought Burpee in 1991 and itself was merged with Seminsis, which then was bought by Monsanto in 2005. Howland was on the boards of both Pan American and PetoSeed.

Photograph: Sweet 100 tomato, growing with blue grama grass, 12 September 2010.

Calamintha

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Hybrid tea roses, rose of Sharon, bird of paradise, buddleia, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, Heavenly Blue morning glories, purple phlox, Sensation cosmos, French marigolds, pampas grass.

Outside the fences: Apache plume, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, white and yellow evening primroses, datura, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy-leaf morning glory, stickleaf, white sweet clover, prostrate knotweed, toothed spurge, amaranth, pigweed, ragweed, Russian thistle, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, spiny lettuce, horseweed, golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, gumweed, broom senecio, Tahokia daisy, purple and heath asters.

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

Looking east: Floribunda roses, hosta, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, Jupiter’s beard, large-leaf soapwort, pink evening primrose, Shirley poppy, scarlet flax, reseeded and Crimson Glory morning glories, garlic chives peaked, Autumn Joy sedum, zinnias, Maximilian sunflower; buds on tansy.

Looking south: Blaze, rugosa and miniature roses, sweet pea.

Looking west: Russian sage, caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, David phlox, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, lead wort, purple ice flower, purple coneflower fading, Mönch aster.

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

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, zonal geranium.

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

Weather: Warm, dry afternoons killing seedlings that emerged in August monsoons; last rain 08/30/09; 12:29 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: When I get home, I walk along the western border to my back door. Some would see passing the calamintha as an opportunity to pick a rough leaf and inhale its slight minty smell.

Instead, I see a reminder of the teasing questions asked by freshmen philosophy instructors designed to make students realize there is an objective reality that cameras catch and an abstraction we humans recognize. Only one sees insects crawling on petals.

I planted six Calamintha nepetoides two years ago. I don’t remember why - perhaps because they were the only available white fading to blue flowers I hadn’t tried in an area where little succeeded. I knew nothing about them then, and today only know they survived my dry, alkaline environment.

Nepetoides is one of the species defined by Alexis Jordan in 1846 when he was first criticizing Linnaeus’ perception of nature as too focused on traits that survived in dead specimens and not enough on living populations. He abandoned collecting expeditions that enlarged the knowledge of European flora to determine which species maintained themselves as distinct units through multiple generations in altered environments in his test garden.

Jordan’s work was soon overshadowed by Darwin. His theory of species became increasingly captive to his Catholic distaste for the other’s emphasis on natural selection and evolution. As Jordan became more doctrinaire, he was criticized by supporters of Darwin for fixating on the durability of species and by Darwin’s critics who still believed in the value of dried herbariums as a source of knowledge.

While later botanists have praised his observations as less constrained by philosophical biases than those of Darwin, Linnean conservatives are still trying to obliterate his influence by attacking the observations that gave rise to his abstraction of the universe. They tell us nemetoides is not a separate species, but a synonym for something else. Only, they can’t agree on what. One authority says it’s the same as the nepeta subspecies of the nepeta species of the Calamintha genus. Another says the genus is Clinopodium. These redefiners have different motives than earlier collectors who thought the perennial was a Melissa or a Satureja.

I don’t in fact know as a certainty that the plants I’m growing are the same as the nepetoides described by Jordan. As that needling philosophy instructor would argue, I only know what the supplier advertised in its catalog and what I think my eyes tell me. Bluestone Perennials would only know what its supplier told it, and no one is currently associated on the web with offering the seeds.

My plants are not the hazy mound shown in the catalog, but a series of erect stems with scattered two-lipped tubular flowers on short horizontal stems with toothy calyx cups that remain when the petals fall. I only assume what I’m growing is what the Ohio nursery advertised, and not some variant that crept into the seed supply.

In their first three years my herbs began blooming the second or third week of August, and continued until the weather turned cold in mid-October. Monique and Roger Jacques, who tested nepetoides grown from seed taken from the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris, found flowering was initiated when the plants were exposed to several long days of red light, and that far-red light in the daily cycle nullified the effects of stimulating light. My plants begin to bloom about the time my almanac changes it’s formula for calculating day length in Santa Fe, a pattern I only assume reflects a change in the quality of light as days shorten.

In France, Alexandre Acloque says nepetoides grow on dry, stony places in the mountainous Lozère department. Elsewhere in Europe, it prefers the dry, calcerous areas of lower and middle mountains in the Alps, Pyrennes, and central Italy. In this country, John Kartesz reports the nepata subspecies on the Alabama plateau and east of the mountains in Virginia, both places with large limestone deposits.

Gardeners participating in on-line forums that group a number of plant names into single category say nepeta becomes invasive at an altitude above 5000' in Albuquerque and nepetoides self-seeds in gravel in Maryland. Everywhere else, in normal garden soils, whatever people think is nepetoides remains a clump forming perennial that may expand with stolons.

My bloom time and ecological niche are circumstantial evidence my plants may in fact be related to the nepetoides described by Jordan. But as one man said, after he talked with the botanist, it’s all quite logical, but is it true?

Notes:
Acloque, Alexandre. Flores Régionales de la France, 1904.

Clausen, Jens, David D. Keck and William M. Hiesey. "The Concept of Species Based on Experiment," American Journal of Botany 26:103-106:1939, discusses philosophies of Linnaeus, Jordan and Darwin.

Jacques, Monique and Roger Jacques. "Calamintha nepetoides," in Abraham H. Halevy, CRC Handbook of Flowering, volume 6, 1989.

Jordan, Alexis. Observations sur Plusieurs Plantes Nouvelles Rares ou Critiques de la France, volume 4, 1846.

Muller, B. Comments in Calamintha nepeta forum, 28 February 2007, in Dave’s Garden website; includes nepetoides as a synonym.

Parlatore, Filippo. Elogio di Filippo Barker Webb, 1856, quotes letter by Webb who met Alexis Jordan to discuss Calamintha.

Talt, Marge. Comments in Calamintha nepatoides forum, 22 October 1997, on hort-net.com.

Thomas, Robert B. The Old Farmer’s Alamanc, 2010.

Thompson, H. Stuart. Sub-alpine Plants or Flowers of the Swiss Woods and Meadows, 1912.

United States Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Research Service. Germplasm Resources Information Network. Defines nepetoides as subspecies of Clinopodium nepeta.

_____. Natural Resources Conservation Service. Plants Profile website maintained by John T. Kartesz, Biota of North America Project, who defines nepetoides as subspecies of Calamintha nepeta.

Photograph: Bluestone’s Calamintha nepetoides with what looks like a black insect, 11 September 2010; Mönch asters in back.

Goat's Head

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; Virginia creeper berries turning purple; yellowing apples visible in only one orchard; baling hay.

Outside the fences: Apache plume, leather-leaf globemallow, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white and yellow evening primroses, datura, bindweed, scarlet creeper, ivy-leaf morning glory, stickleaf, white sweet clover, goat’s head, prostrate knotweed, toothed spurge, amaranth, pigweed, ragweed, Russian thistle, chamisa, snakeweed, goat’s beard, paper flower, spiny lettuce, horseweed, golden hairy asters, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, gumweed, Tahokia daisy; red top and black grama 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, scarlet flax, 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.

Looking west: Russian sage, caryopteris, catmint, lady bells, David phlox, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, lead plant, purple ice flower, purple coneflower, Mönch aster.

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

Inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, hummingbird on hollyhocks, goldfinches, gecko, wasp, black harvester and small red ants; Canada geese near village.

Weather: Rained before dawn Monday; hot afternoon temperatures offset the moisture and cool mornings; 12:48 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: When I was in sixth grade, we were asked to bring a poem to school. I still remember mine:

Poison ivy, poison oak
Beautiful, but do not stroke

This couplet probably didn’t impress my teacher with my finer aesthetic sensibilities, but I think it did reveal an awareness of the duplicities of nature lacking in my better prepared peers who spent too much time indoors.

It always surprises me when I see people walk on goat’s head as if it were harmlessly sunning on the sidewalk. Bill Davis claims he repairs "thousands of flat tires" in his Boise, Idaho, bicycle shop caused by puncture vine.

George Stuart translates the Chinese name for its tan seed pod, chih-hsiung, to mean "preventing walking." It’s Greek name, caltrop, comes from spiked iron balls planted in front of calvary horses to halt their advance. Wikipedia repeats the tale that murderers in South Africa smear poison on the burs and leave them in the path of their victims. My Spanish-speaking friends simply call them tortitos.

This is not a plant to ignore.

But my neighbors do. Every year since I learned its dangers, I’ve pulled plants whenever I’ve seen them, most from my drive or the garden bed at the downhill end of the drive. Generally the stringy white taproot comes out easily.

My next door neighbor removes them, but only after their spidery stems have radiated a foot from the crown and bloomed a while. My uphill neighbor simply gets on his rider mower whenever the pigweed gets tall. The goat’s head patch growing in the old horse corral gets trimmed at the same time, but the plants send out more ground-hugging stems and continue blooming.

Goat’s head promises much when it emerges with the monsoons that follow the drought of July that leaves me willing to accept anything, so long as it’s green and covers barren soil. When the tiny stems branch from the main fleshy one with five to eight pairs of rounded leaves folded towards each other, newcomers think maybe, if there were enough, they could overlap and blanket the ground. And indeed this year, when more than usual have sprouted, the stems that normally sprawl are reaching up in places in billowing mounds of bright green.

The promise is fulfilled when the tiny yellow flowers emerge at the tips of small stems rising from the leaflet junctions. With their flat five petals that open in the morning and close by noon, they resemble oxalis or purslane.

Then the promise is betrayed. The stem grows to hatch new flowers, while the older petals fall away leaving a five-part ovary. Each detachable section is hardened with two or more sharp spines designed to stick any unwary passerby who might unintentionally plant it.

Three to five long, narrow seeds are nestled inside waiting for a summer like this. The largest germinates first; the others may lie dormant, waiting for better conditions. This summer, the first plants appeared along the road the first of July; then, masses appeared the first of August. If the nutlets bury themselves well, the seeds can survive twenty years.

Tribulus terrestris isn’t native to this continent. People assume it arrived in the late nineteenth century when midwesterners brought animals from Europe to improve their herds. Duncan Porter says it was first noticed in California in 1902. By 1915 it was seen around Deming, Glorietta and the Mesilla valley. It spread everywhere with the automobile, but became most common in this part of the country with its warm, dry monsoon climate.

Shepherds soon learned goat’s head could be fatal to sheep and that animals would seek it out. By 1961, the annual had become such a nuisance the government imported two species of weevils to control it. One feeds on the seeds; the other on the stems. The only side effect scientists have noted is that the attacked plants produce more flowers which produce more pods which attacking weevils use to produce more weevils.

In the old world, herbalists in India, China and the middle east learned the plant contains a number of useful chemicals. Maude Grieve reports burra gookeroo was taken back to England where it was used to treat male impotence, nocturnal emissions, and incontinence. In this country, homeopathists bought ikshugandha from the East Indies for "seminal weakness, ready emissions and impoverished semen" and "partial impotence caused by over indulgence of advancing age."

In 1999, with all the intrigue of a cold war spy, Emeric Delczeg told bodybuilders who read Pump that the Bulgarian government had isolated its active ingredient, protodioscin, and developed a secret supplement for its Olympic teams. The only reason he knew about it was that he had been on the Romanian National Weightlifting team at the time.

Delczeg wasn’t the most disinterested source. He was a partner in a nutritional supplements company that sold Tribestan and was later publicized by investigation into Barry Bonds access to steroids. In 2005, the government outlawed most prohormones. Jim Stoppani immediately told readers of Flex that the active ingredient in Tribulus terrestris was a precursor to testosterone that wasn’t covered by the ban.

Scientists haven’t been able to establish the benefits of goat’s head extracts, but that doesn’t stop men from hoping. After all, Delczeg told them only the Bulgarian products were good because they "add a specific fertilizer to the soil." The website for the product he was selling also mentions an Indonesian study that discovered plants grown on different soils had different levels of the chemical.

A perhaps less biased team in Iran tested the effectiveness of the member of the Zygophylla family against urinary infections and established it was useful against three types of bacteria. They noted earlier studies had shown plants grown in Yemen had no utility, but all parts of the plant grown in Turkey were efficacious. They themselves found the fruit, stem and leaves collected near Arak were better than the root, but only the pod and leaf were active in India.

If you want to protect your feet or bicycle it’s enough to learn the shape of goat’s head on the road; if that’s too much trouble, the shop in Boise will sell you something to repair your tire in the field. If you want to enhance your masculinity, you either have to find a supplier who understands plants or spend more time sweating in the gym.

A child’s rhyme and a downward cast eye are only the beginning of the initiation into the mysteries of nature.

Notes:Adimoelja, Arif. "Phytochemicals and the Breakthrough of Traditional Herbs in the Management of Sexual Dysfunction," International Journal of Andrology 23:82-84:2000. He did tests in Indonesia using Tribestan and cites the unavailable Sidik, "Etnopharmacognosy and Phytochemical Aphrodisiac," Seminar on ‘Botanical Aphrodisiac,’ University of Jakarta, 1999, for his information on the variable effects of soil.

Boericke, William. Materia Medica, 1901; augmented 1927 edition kept in print by B. Jahn Publishers of New Dehli.

Davis, Bill. Quoted by Rachel Abrahamson, "The Trouble with Tribulus terrestris L.," Boise Weekly, 25 July 2007.

Delczeg, Emeric. "Tribestan," Pump, January/February, 1999.

Grieve, Maude. A Modern Herbal, 1931, edited by Hilda Leyel.

Kianbakht, Saied and Fereshteh Jahaniani. "Evaluation of Antibacterial Activity of Tribulus terrestris L. Growing in Iran," Iranian Journal of Pharmacology and Therapeutics 2:22-24:2003.

McDonough, Sean P., Amy H. Woodbury, F. D. Galey, Dennis W. Wilson, Nancy East, and Elizabeth Bracken. "Hepatogenus Photosensitization of Sheep in California Associated with Ingestion of Tribulus terrestris (Puncture Vine)," Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation 6:392-395:1994.

Porter, Duncan M. Entries for Zygophyllaceae, Tribulus and T. terrestris L. in The Jepson Manual: Higher Plants of California, 1993; James C. Hickman’s revision of Willis Linn Jepson, Manual of the Flowering Plants of California, 1925.

Stoppani, Jim. "Beat the Ban: Eight Testosterone-Boosting Supplements to Replace Recently Banned Prohormones," Flex, May, 2005.

Stuart, George Arthur. Chinese Materia Medica, 1911, reprinted by Gordon Press, 1977.

University of California, Riverside. "Puncturevine," Biological-Integrated Pest Control and Insect Identification website; seed feeding weevil is Microlarinus lareynii, stem and crown mining weevil is Microlarinus lypriformis.

Wikipedia. "Tribulus terrestris" which cites "Tribulus terrestris" in the Botanical Dermatology Database as its source for the South African anecdote. The database in turn cites John Mitchell Watt and Maria Gerdin Breyer-Brandwijk, The Medicinal and Poisonous Plants of Southern and Eastern Africa, 1962 edition, which is not easily available.

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

Photograph: Goat’s head growing in a dense patch beside the main road, 29 August 2010.

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.