Queen Anne's Lace / Wild Carrot

 Queen Anne's Lace (QAL) is a common summer weed.  Its range is pretty broad, as witnessed by the University of Minnesota page on it.  I had some the first year I moved into my former house, but after mowing in the bloom stage, it disappeared and I never saw it again.  In my new house, I haven't seen it before this year. 

 

This year I have a bunch of it growing along a fence line by the road.  Some seeds apparently blew in from somewhere.  The above picture might actually be of a related plant, wild carrot. Until i went looking, I wasn't aware there was a difference between wild carrot and QAL.

QAL typically has a red flower cluster in the middle of the bloom.  The above picture (and all of what I have growing) lacks that.  However, according to Green Deane, QAL (Daucus carota) and wild carrot (Daucus pusillus) are related but the latter lacks the red flowers (QAL may sometimes be without the red center, too). QAL is non-native, but wild carrot grows here naturally.  Both have a carrot smell to them.  I think I might have nibbled on a root at some point, but in general, there's nothing worthwhile about these plants unless one is lost in the wilderness and starving.  Domesticated carrots are the way to go if one wants edible roots.

Thistles have nice flowers, but then they go bad. It's a similar situation with QAL/wild carrot.  I want to avoid having that happen if possible.  I don't really want a field full of them next season. So I headed out to where the plants are growing and snipped off the seed heads.

Fortunately, the problem is relatively contained for now, and hopefully my intervention will keep it that way--as it is, some of the seed heads had probably already released their seeds before I intervened.  I also expect the plants to respond to the loss of their reproductive capacity by putting out new flowers.  They seem to both stay in bloom longer than thistles and take longer to mature their seeds after the flowers close.  That gives me a little time.  Thistles transition from good to bad very quickly.

 If I'm not successful, the only other control mechanism will be mowing next year when blooms first emerge, and keeping it up as they re-emerge.

A Beautiful Pest

Wisteria.  It's very invasive, spreading everywhere, and it climbs trees, covering them up (though maybe not as thoroughly as kudzu) and eventually choking them.  I have some wisteria encroaching from one property line, and I've been dealing with it for a few years--not very effectively.

This year I have at least made some progress on it.  This is the time of year when the leaves on trees are just coming out, but the wisteria is in bloom, making it easy to see.  More importantly, the vines snaking up trees are easy to see, too, because there isn't much undergrowth yet.

I noticed a tightly-wrapped pine with a couple of wisteria vines going up.  When I cut them--it was easy, even though they were thick; the wood isn't very substantial--I saw these marks in the bark.  This is one reason it's so noxious.  It wraps itself tightly around trees, then as the vines grow in diameter, it chokes off the cambium layer, like a slow-motion python. Cutting the vine relieves the pressure.

I know it'll just send out sprouts from the vine stump at ground level, but I have at least knocked it back a few years.  One of the vines I cut (not on the tree shown) was as big around as my wrist.  Even that thick, I was able to sever it with some loppers (though not in one bite).

All that being said, the flowers are nice.  For a brief time, a couple of weeks at most, they're attractive and fragrant.  Some people to this day buy the stuff as an ornamental, and if tightly controlled (which is challenging), it can be a good small tree for that.  The downsides are too great, however.  I went ahead and severed every large stem I could find.  The flowers will wilt a little faster than normal this year, but that's fine.

Garden Carts

I have a nice wheelbarrow.  I got it at Lowe's 20 years ago and it still serves me well.  For some tasks, like hauling dirt or other dense, heavy items, wheelbarrows are optimal (though for truly heavy loads, one with dual tires would probably be better than my model).

However, for other things they leave much to be desired, such as hauling brush.  I have a long driveway and keeping the privet, wisteria, and other plants hacked back during the growing season is a chore.   Recently, I did some trimming along the driveway.  I used a garden cart instead of the wheelbarrow--I got mine at Carts Vermont.  Its capacity is nominally only about double the wheelbarrow, but because of the box shape and the handle, it can hold far more plant cuttings.  I was able to pile brush high on the cart and balance it for the walk back up the driveway, towing the cart behind me.  I don't know if it was effective or not, but I cut some lower-stem pieces and stuck them into the stack vertically to try to hold it together.  One way or another, it worked, and nothing fell off on the walk.  Most of the cart is privet, although there was some wisteria and a few oak or pine saplings (very fortunately, there's no poison ivy in the area I was cutting).  Before loading, I trimmed everything to be about 4-6 feet long so that I could still get a decent grip on the handle.  Here's a side view:

When dumped into the truck bed, before stomping the load down, the one load from the cart looked like this:

I'm impressed with its hauling ability.

Still More on Thistles

Here's a case study on thistles gone rogue.  This is a picture of a field, not someone's yard:  But they haven't mowed during thistle blooming season for the last few years and now have a problem.   It's hard to see how this field will produce much but thistles in a few years.

At one time it was a field of purple blooms, but there's nothing attractive about this.

Update on my own thistles: I mowed them down as noted previously, and they haven't sent up any more vertical stems.  However, they haven't died, either.  I expect them to be back next year.

I'm fortunate that I don't have any thistle growing in inaccessible or far-flung areas.  I could use my scythe or weed eater to take care of them almost anywhere, but it's better not to have to worry about it.

Another Weed Flower

I've written about blooming weeds before, such as jewel weed.  Blackberry can be considered a weed, too; it is in bloom in late April / early May in north Georgia; it spreads aggressively; it also sometimes yields good fruit.

Another weed that both blooms and has the potential to spread is thistle.  There are a lot of varieties, and I'm not sure which one is in my back yard.  I have a couple of plants back there that seem to recur, although I cut them before they set seed.  Most thistles are annual or biennial, so I'm not sure why this happens every spring in the same place. One that is at least somewhat perennial and can spread by roots is Canadian thistle.

That notwithstanding, the blooms are large, pretty, and have a nice fragrance.  If they set seed, though, watch out. one plant can produce tens of thousands of seeds per year.

There are open fields not too far away that are heavily-infested and unattended, so they're getting worse with every passing year.

Here's another view of the plant that shows its form better; Canadian thistles have smooth upper stems, so that checks.   In the background of both shots you can see another non-native invasive that is truly worthless, privet.  I have a lot of it around and I'm going to try to cut a lot of it back this year.  While it does bloom, I don't really like those flowers at all.  Bizarrely, privet is still sold in nurseries...

Shown below is a stand of thistle near an Interstate on ramp.  Although the display may be reasonably attractive in the photo, if it isn't mowed soon a million seeds will be produced within a couple of months (possibly quite literally a million--or more).

While one or two plants can be nice, I'm fortunate I don't have more of it.

Update: Okay, so maybe it's not a good idea to have even one or two.  About three weeks after the above pictures were taken, the first flower had turned to seed, although new blooms were still opening.  I didn't get to it and bag it before some seeds escaped...but not many.  Alas.

Weed Roses

It appears I have some multiflora rose, aka weeds, growing here and there... I have some upright canes but mostly ones that snake along the ground.  The leaves and thorns make it obvious that they're roses; this is the first year that I have seen any blooms.

They're fragrant enough, but their invasive properties (and susceptibility to rose rosette disease) render them undesirable.  I'm going to be more aggressive about dealing with them.

They're growing mostly in a fairly shady area, competing with blackberries and other similar plants. At least they don't grow very fast, so cutting them and keeping them back should be relatively easy.