I imagine most places have their own trees that drop TONS of seeds at some time in the year, leading to ZILLIONS of tiny seedlings popping up in every inch of garden, and every flowerpot.
Around here (west of Chicago) it is silver maples, followed closely by elm. This seems to be a mast year - tho generally heavy, I can’t remember the samaras piling up this deep! I swear, I could spend days doing nothing other than pulling seedlings, and by the time I made a circuit of my lot and got back to the beginning, new ones would’ve popped up where I just weeded.
Fortunately, we’ve had so damn much rain this spring, and laid down new mulch, so they pull up easily.
Are you also fighting the maple invasion this spring, or do you have a different scourge in your locale?
I am still literally chasing maple seedlings from the last time this seedling helicopter madness happened, what, 2-3 years ago? Except they’re not little seedlings anymore, they’re full-blown trees that are muchmuchmuch harder to eradicate.
I do not look forward to doing the same in the coming years. It seems like the maple storm was stronger than ever this year.
Around my house it’s usually valley oak seedlings coming up. Or one other kind of tree that I haven’t gotten identified. This year something with an odd leaf came up in one unused yard pot. I left it there because I was curious and knew someone who might be able to identify it. As it grew, the shape of the leaves changed and I could identify it. I now have a seedling fig tree. No idea where it might have come from.
River birch here. I love my one adult tree, but sweet baby Jesus every year there’s approximately one gazillion offspring I need to yank out of pots and garden beds.
Fan Palm trees.
They set vast numbers of tiny, BB-sized seeds, that germinate readily. They also get stuck in the treads of my sneakers, so they end up in the house.
They are annoying as hell.
I live underneath a huge maple and it constantly gifts me with itty bitty fucking maple saplings, annoying everywhere but most especially all over the gravel and stone patio. Grrr.
And Himalayan blackberries, which are asshole plants from hell and I hate them so much.
Ailanthus keeps infesting my yard and so does something that looks for all the world like belladonna, but I’m not sure that’s what it is but dayum it sure looks like it.
We get a few maple seedlings but if they’re in the lawn they just get mowed down. My enemies are buckthorn and creeping charlie - both almost impossible to get rid of totally.
I have a walnut problem. Giant trees that throw walnuts at the house. Picture limes that get all black and gooey. Then take root.
This bindweed…is that the stuff with sort of square vines that chokes everything else? I’ve got that too, and I hate it. It’ll pull down even day lilies.
In each of the last 3 houses we have lived, we have had immediate neighbors who grew buckthorn as ornamental trees/hedges! :eek::smack:
Unbelievable stupidity.
Have also had HUGE mulberry trees taken down at our last 2 houses. Love that purple bird shit.
But around here, it is largely silver maples. As I understand it, a lot of developers plant them because they are cheap and grow quickly. Of course, the have weak wood and tend to split/drop lims, have no fall color, and drop zillions of seeds…
My mother tells me that the Rose of Sharon bushes sold in the U.S. are sterile. Not the one I have here. We have a stone garden and I spend at least half a day pulling out Rose of Sharon seedlings. Every year. Despite landscape cloth.
I have to say that all of the tree seedlings that pop up in my yard are relatively slow growing. The thistles from next door, however, are relatively speedy.
Under our redwood trees spring up all these little tree seedlings, but they’re not redwoods. The seedlings come from little nuts or big seeds that look a little like a cherry pit. We could not for the life of us figure out where they came from, until one day we noticed dozens of robins flying back and forth to our trees from a hedge of ornamental trees a few houses away. As we watched, the robins that came to our trees mumbled something around in their beaks or crops, and then opened their mouths and cacked out the little cherry pit seeds.
They do this every year and every year we have hundreds of little ornamental tree seedlings to pull up.
Are they the natural silver maples that grow really really tall, or are they those mutated abomination dwarf variety that developers seem to love so much? If the former, I wish I could have silver maple seedlings pop up in my yard. I’ve got a friggin elm sucker in my back yard that I can’t seem to kill no matter what I do. It’s coming from the neighbor behind me with a sick and failing elm in his yard.
