Creeping Charlie

Weed or ground cover? Invasive lawn pest, or salad green? Kill it, or pot it?

Creeping Charlie, aka ground-ivy, run-away-robin, catsfoot, etc. Also Glechoma hederacea. Not an ivy; a mint.

When I Googled Creeping Charlie, the first screen of links were mostly to "How to kill" sites, but one, instead, had a wild beer recipe. In my mixed, half-wild lawn, it fills in the gaps where I've ripped out grass-poisoning hairy catsear, and holds back the stubborn buttercups; I'll let it be for now.

The plant creeps through the lawn, with occasional stems standing to 5 or 6 inches tall. It doesn't mind mowing.

The flowers grow in clusters of two or three near the tip of the plant.

Each pollinated flower can produced up to four seeds, which are dispersed by the stem bending over and depositing the ripe seeds in the ground adjacent to the parent plant, although ants may carry the seeds further. (Wikipedia)

A vast improvement over the catsear, which produces thousands (up to 6000 per rosette!) of wind-blown seeds that germinate quickly in the neighbour's lawn as well as mine.

Tiny, tiny. Tinier.

On a weedy playing field, cropped close, many miniature plants were in flower below the mower line. I collected one entire plant and brought it home. It was, roots to flower heads, less than an inch tall.

The entire plant, with roots. I planted it in a clamshell.

I set the plant in a sunny window and kept it watered for a few weeks. It never grew any larger. The flowers shrivelled, and didn't produce seeds; my window seems to be lacking in pollinators.

It looks like one of the cresses; the basal rosette and flowers are like that of the Little Western Bitter-cress, but that one grows from 4 to 18 inches tall. The hairy leaves look like those of Field Pennycress, up to 20 inches tall.

I needed a magnifying glass, or the camera lens, to appreciate the flowers.

White, pink, and yellow bouquet.

Ant-level view. Small ant, of course.

And to think that I must have stepped on hundreds of these flowers walking across the field!

There are always dandelions

And this one has a stripy bee.

Hurry! While the sun still shines.

A thousand leaves, a thousand uses

Yarrow, still blooming, between rainstorms:

Achillea millefolium; aka Thousand-leaved clover, Angel Flower, Squirrel Tail, etc.

My guide, Plants of Coastal BC, has the usual brief description, then a long section on the BC First Nations medicinal uses of the plant, broken down by tribal groups. Each one used yarrow for a different purpose: "... as a poultice; ... a sore throat gargle;" for childbirth, to purifiy the blood, for headaches and as an eyewash, for diarrhea and as a bath for invalids. "The Squamish used it to cure measles." Elsewhere, it also repelled mosquitoes and prevented baldness, cured toothache, angina, and flatulence, and drew the venom out of spider bites. And so on and so on ...

My opinion, offered tentatively, is that the plant is so common, so attractive, so pleasantly aromatic, that people everywhere decided it must be good for something. And when they tried it and got better from what ailed them, as people generally do, they attributed it to the yarrow. Either that, or the plant is miraculous, which I doubt.

And it's edible, as well. I found a recipe for pasta with a yarrow dressing, which sounds interesting enough to try some day.

And then, it's just beautiful.

Each "flower" is a cluster of about 5 ray flowers, with the tiny, cream, disk flowers in the centre.

Zooming in. Sometimes the ray flowers are pinkish; these are waxy white.

This specimen found on Tyee Spit.

Stubborn

Can you believe these are still blooming, near the end of November?

One of the many weedy yellow asters.

I brought it inside, to dry it off, of course; it's still raining most of the time.

Dinner on the lawn

My lawn is half native weeds, half moss, half invasives, and a sprinkling of grass*. And, in season, mushrooms.

Reddish brown, glossy 'shroom. But what's that on the stalk?

A hungry slug. There are slug holes in the cap, too.

*Three halves and a sprinkling add up to one whole. The categories overlap.

Good for what ails you

My "lawn" is flowering, even mowed down low. Gradually pushing out the grass and moss, I have buttercups, white clover, black medic (a tiny yellow flower; "black" refers to the seeds), escaped Creeping Jenny from my garden, a miniature white flower, too small to identify; and this week, the self-heal is popping up blue heads an inch or two high.

Self-heal, heal-all, carpenter's herb, blue curls, sickle-wort, Prunella vulgaris; many names for a tiny plant.

The flower has a hooded top, and a fringed lower petal, divided in three parts.

Prunella is a member of the mint family; it has the same square stems that most mints do. It's a perennial, growing from rhizomes, so it will persist even if it is mowed down before the flowers mature. Unmowed, it will grow up to a foot tall, or long, depending on whether it decides to stand up or crawl along the ground. It will grow in any moist area, from lawns to roadsides or the edges of forests, and can be found all over the Northern hemisphere.

The names come from its many medicinal uses; whatever ails you, someone reccommends self-heal for it. Cold sores, digestive problems, heart conditions, wounds (hence the "carpenter's herb" name), boils and bruises, mosquito bites and sore throats; the list goes on and on. Wikipedia mentions that it is even showing promise in AIDS research. Whether it works for all these or not, the very name and reputation should enhance its usefulness as a placebo.

And it's edible, on top of all that! Fresh in a salad, steeped in a tea, boiled as a pot herb; it's as varied in its culinary talents as it is in the medical department. "They" say it makes a tasty cool drink, too.

I wonder; if I picked every single one of the tiny plants in my yard; would I have enough for one vegetable serving?

The view from my desk

I've been busy the last little while, getting ready for company, a wedding, and a week in Campbell River afterwards. I've been carrying my camera everywhere and never taking photos. Traffic isn't all that inspiring, nor are offices and malls.

But in between times, I keep the camera on my desk. And every so often, I look up from the phone or the mail, and see a squirrel hanging by her toes to get at the suet, or a ray of sunlight pointing out a just-opened flower. And sometimes, I take a breather and wander out to the lawn. With the camera in hand, of course.

This evening, just after dark, I looked out, and there was a baby raccoon. A really small baby; I'd never seen one that young before. Such little stubby legs! And the wide-eyed, amazed stare of a baby discovering the world for the first time; so cute!

Then the mother came down the path to take a drink from my bird bath, and four more kits followed her. I rushed out with the camera, but by the time I had it on and focused in the dim light, they were halfway down the lawn, the kits all lined up watching me, the mother trying to lead them away. As the camera finally clicked, they all turned as one and ran off. The photo shows two black blobs. I'm not posting it; you can imagine it; green lawn, black fuzzy blobs.

Laurie came out and we followed them to his hosta and fern garden. There, the kits hid behind a big evergreen trunk and peeped out at us. We stepped closer, cautiously, and the kits started to climb the tree. But they were too young; a few scrabbled at the bottom; a couple managed to get three feet or so above ground, and clung there, uncertain as to what to do next. Finally, they crawled back down, more awkwardly than they had climbed.

The mother left, and the kits, left alone, dashed across the path  one by one, and into the bushes after her.

Some photos do turn out, though. Here are a few backyard sights:

Astilbe. This was a couple of days ago; this afternoon, several red ones had opened up, too.

The underside of a begonia leaf, in sunlight. I saw it glowing from my desk, and had to drop my work and go out to get a better look.

Crow on the lawn

The lawn will never feature in a landscaper's manual; it's a mix of grass, moss, white clover, self-heal, black medic, and creeping buttercups. And hawkweed, but I weed that out conscientiously. And it gets mowed only when the guy who does it is in the mood. We like it. So do the birds.

The flickers are shy and rarely step out of the undergrowth. This one stayed close to safety. I took the photo from my desk; when I finally stood up to go closer, he left.

We pruned a dragging branch off the plane tree, and found several clusters of yellow eggs. And this busy couple of prospective parents.

I brought in a leaf with eggs on it. They were little yellow ovals, standing on end side by side. The next morning, I looked at them again; now they were black.

I didn't have time to check them again until after supper. And the eggs were white, and surrounded by tiny, just-hatched ladybug larvae.

Empty egg cases. Some of the larvae are eating them; two or three are starting to wander about. 

That was last night. This morning, I went back to the tree and harvested a few leaves loaded with aphids for larvae food. I checked the container just now; there are still live aphids, but quite a few dead ones; the larvae are feeding. Some look quite a bit bigger than they were yesterday, already.

Laurie's pansies. I love these angry faces. They remind me of a crowd of protesters, but where are the signs?

A red, red rose.

And now, I'm off to bed. I've got another busy day tomorrow.

Worm's-eye view

When we parked at Centennial beach last week, a man was cutting the grass on the dividers with one of those big riding mowers, looking bored. Back and forth, around the signposts, down to the end and back again, shaving a mere half-inch or so off the top; no challenge in it. I would have been yawning, too, and I'm not easily bored.

When we returned, he was gone. The grass didn't look much changed. While I waited for Laurie to de-boot and re-shoe, I sat on the curb and looked at the two-inch-high plants sharing the divider with the grass and clover.

Common storksbill. The leaves are hairy, fern-like, the flowers 5 petalled, short-lived. The seeds grow in long, pointed capsules, taller than the rest of the plant.

"As the fruits dry, they split lengthwise into 5 sharp-pointed segments, each attached to its portion of the separated style. The slender style becomes spirally twisted as it dries, but it straightens out again when wet. With alternate moisture and dryness, this uncoiling squirming action drives the attached seed into the ground." (From Plants of Coastal British Columbia, Pojar & MacKinnon)

Another view of the leaves. After being crushed by the mower, they are straightening up again.

A seedling ribbed plantain with hairy leaves. This may never get a chance to flower; they bloom at the top of tall spikes, which will get mowed down.

I pity the poor guy up on his high mower; all he sees from up there is a green fuzz.

Bioblitz: the sites

After a childhood in a remote area of Vancouver Island, in a settlement with around 25 inhabitants, "greenery" was important to me, the crabs and gulls and seals as much my companions as the humans. Since then, I have lived most of my life in urban spaces, including 10 years in that most urban of environments, Mexico City. So I guess it is understandable that I have always paid special attention to those pockets of unpaved wildness the planners and developers and landscapers have somehow missed. I have learned to appreciate the tenacity with which dandelions claim cracks in the sidewalk and the versatility of sparrows which raise an extra brood through the winter, by building their nests in the housing of the lights of a covered parking lot. And the immense variety of life, under these most demanding of circumstances.

So of course, planning for the Bioblitz, I chose two of these forgotten areas.

First, my backyard. A few years back, we sold our property, and I moved into Seniors' apartments (55+; I was barely 55). I am fortunate to have found a place in a small building, and with its own garden space, a lawn and a double row of cedars cutting it off from the next development. Only one other person on my side of the building bothers with her space; the rest is mine and the birds'. A logical place to start.

Next, just across the street is a block-wide stretch of vacant space, half of it semi-fenced for a possible future development project, the rest undisturbed since the years when this was farm area, and that was a bog. What has "Mother Nature" done with this? I aim to find out, starting this afternoon.

Saturday and Sunday, though, I patrolled "my" yard. This is an area about 275 feet by 40 feet. It has been in lawn for some 25 years, and has been mowed regularly, but, apart from the two personal spaces where my neighbour and I have been building shade gardens, nothing else. Clay soil, shady and boggy. As much moss as grass, lawn weeds, occasional mushrooms. Beside it, a row of evergreens, a fence and path, another row. Ivy has taken over and had climbed most of the trees. Last summer, Laurie and I spent a day cutting and pulling it down, so now it is just at the base. There is still a lot of dead ivy up in the trees.

I am ignoring the personal garden areas in this survey; they feature non-native plants which are not expected to invade the "wild" area. The hedges, where they still survive, are box.

The first task was to catalogue the weeds in the lawn and the edging. Quite a list:
Shrubs -

• oregon grape, mahonia aquifolium
  
• salmonberry, rubus spectabilis,
• thimbleberry, rubus parviflorus
  
• wild rose, rosa nutkana
• hardhack, spirea douglasii
• kudzu (what th-?)
  
• rhododendron, rhododendron californicum

The rhodos are native, but purposely planted. The other shrubs are volunteer.

Around the edges -

• bindweed, convovulus sepium
• dandelion, taraxacum officinale
  
• English ivy, hedera helix
• sword fern, polystchum munitum
• lady fern, athyrium filix-femina
• foxglove, digitalis purpurea
• periwinkle
• fringecup
  
• horsetail, equisetum arvense

In the lawn itself -

• wall lettuce, lactuca muralis
• buttercup, ranunculus repens
• red sorrel, rumex acetosella
  
• goosefoot of some sort (probably)
• plantain, plantago major
• self-heal, prunella vulgaris, all over the place
  
• some coarse rosettes that I can't identify; nasty ones that kill everything around them
• hairy cat's ears? (see photo above: if you recognize this as something else, please tell me.)
  
• and three separate varieties of moss.

More variety than I expected; I never really looked all that closely before. This is a good exercise in observation.

Laurie walked me up and down the row of trees, pointing out the different varieties; my head was spinning by the time we'd finished. Hemlock and cedar and some variety of pines, maybe a Douglas fir. A couple of plane trees, a young cherry in bloom, three vine maples, a couple of alder, and a recent addition, just sprouting leaves. I don't know what it is, yet.

Next post: the two, four, six, eight and many-footed residents of this plot. And the preliminary survey of the vacant lot.

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