But the dominant weed in my landlady’s weedpatch yard is this one. What is it? I believe it is native to the the SF Bay Area, since I knew it as a child (a time getting to be sort of medieval) and my mother, I believe, called it ‘scissors weed’, because you can pierce the large end of one of its needles and insert a second needle to make something simple minds see as a scissors.
Ray (gotta kick this weed)
I forgot. Hope its not poison ivy. But I remember taking the flower buds & let them dry they make real pretty spirals or something.
No, far from poison ivy, which doesn’t grow anywhere on the West Coast that I know of anyhow. And poison oak does not even begin to look like this. This is just a low-lying annual weed with soft stems that grows in sunny areas.
Ray
It’s probably Erodium circutarium, or Cut Leaf Filaree. More info here: http://www.huntana.com/feis/plants/forb/erocic/botanical_and_ecological_characteristics.html
It’s worth the risk of burning, to have a second chance…
This weed in my yard is now in bloom. I had forgotten having seen flowers on it in other years.
Yes, it does appear to be Erodium cicutarium, but that’s ‘cicutarium’, not ‘circutarium’. Another image.
Erodium botrys looks a bit different. Another image.
These plants apparently are also intruders from other shores, having accompanied Europeans coming over here, but I didn’t see exactly where these plants, which are now in many countries, originated. E. cicutarium seems to bear several common names, including ‘storksbill’ and ‘red-stemmed --’ or ‘red-leaf filaree’. I haven’t seen red stems or leaves on these plants locally though. I note that E. botrys goes by the names ‘long-beaked storksbill’, ‘crane’s bill’, and ‘wide-leaf --’ or broad-leaf filaree’.
I also wonder what in the world these plants have in “mind” doing with those “bills” or spears. They’re not hard enough to impale animals.
Ray (off the weed for now)
Ahh, to be in San Francisco when the weeds are blooming. Sigh
During the same season you can watch the houses slowly slide into the sea. Not the most rain of any February last month, but a record for the number of days with rain – 21. On most of those days, though, the sun poked out a bit.
I take it you’re in Calgary, not Dallas. I remember a summer vacation, as a kid (1949), when, from Calgary up to the Pacific Divide on the Alcan highway, it had rained solid for 40 days and Albertans figured on its raining for 40 more before expecting it to quit.
Ray
Hmm, maybe I need to change that line in my profile. I lived most of my life in Calgary, but I now live in Dallas. Although I do remember some very intense rainstorms, I don’t rremember any rain lasting more than 3 or 4 days. Then again may father was 15 in 1949.
“He love people, all of them, washed and unwashed; he loves his wretched pack of sponging relatives. He shoots people, arrests people, but he doesn’t like it.”
