Weedy Wednesday: St. John's Wort

St. John's Wort is our "Weedy Wednesday" plant this week.  This plant has a conflicted reputation, a devil in one sense because it is a noxious weed, but in another sense a useful herb. It has brought some conflict among gardeners as to whether we should allow it to take root in our gardens too so I thought I'd share a little bit about it in the spirit of helping us make a wise decision.

Chase Devil, Tipton Weed, Klamath Weed, St John's Wort

St. John's Wort has been used for thousands of years medicinally and there is a long list of names attributed to it (the link is most likely not a complete list but a good indicator of its history).  The efficacy of it medicinally was tested recently in Germany and it has been tested in Canada as well.  There are several publications with information on its use as a medicinal herb that you can read for more information on it.

Reddish stems which will each hold several flowers

Hypericum perforatum is a stoloniferous herbaceous perennial that in winter can be seen as a rosette, the grouping of leaves and stems that surround the crown of the plant.  Its leaves are opposite of each other on the stem.  As far as I know there is not another weed in my garden that looks similar.

Little bits of light showing the perforated leaf, an important ID feature

If you hold one of the leaves up to the light you will see what appear to be little pin holes, thus the species name "perforatum".

The plant produces several flowering stems that grow between 2' to 3' tall but can get as tall as 5'.  Each flower produces seed by the hundreds with each plant capable of producing 100,000 seeds per year.  These seeds can persist in the soil for decades. (Knowing this, do you want it in your garden or not?)

It is important to note that this plant has had a negative impact, out competing native and foraging plants and is considered a noxious weed in at least 20 countries around the world.  However, it is cultivated as an herb for commercial purposes in some areas of south eastern Europe. (What to do, what to do...)

It can be controlled digging out plants when you see them or using herbicides such as 2, 4-D and Glysophate if needed.  As a biological control, Chrysolina beetle were introduced in the 1940s and have now become well established in helping battle this weed in the western United States.  These beetles feed on the leaves and flower buds and help to keep it from spreading unchecked.  This year was the first year I had seen them in my garden.

Chrysolina beetle in my garden are feasting quite happily this year.

Important to note is that this plant is poisonous to grazing animals such as cattle, sheep, goats and horses if they eat enough of it.

Personally I like the bit of yellow the blooms add to the garden, even if it is not refined in its appearance.  It is however a self sower and those seeds, hundreds in each seed pod and they last for decades in the soil so I'm never going to be completely rid of it...and if anything happens to me it will become a nightmare plant!  So I think I've made up my mind.  Have you made up yours yet?

With all of that said, don't you think we need to ask some very important questions here?  If it grows so readily do we even need to bother with it or will letting it grow in our garden only become a part of the problem?

So think about it; it may be useful but should we really be cultivating it or just wild harvesting if need be?  I'm not sure if this helped any of you, but I know I'll be pulling out all of mine. The way I see it is I can always harvest it in the wild which will also help keep it from spreading.  Happy Gardening!

NOTE: Be sure to always properly ID any plant before using it medicinally, especially if it is to be taken internally!

Copyright © 2011 by Patty Hicks
All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All reviews must include author's name and a link back to this blog.

Plants Gone Bad? Are You Sure?

If it were a perfect world plants to come with honest labels, even warning labels.  How many times have we found ourselves unwittingly bringing home plant thugs and joyfully planting them in our gardens.  Its not always labeling but can be disinformation such as an improper identification of a plant or...us getting caught up in the joy of our passion.  Either way the end is not as pretty as we had hoped for.

Stachys chamissonis var. cooleyae

For every gardener there comes that day when we find ourselves cursing the moment we mindlessly grabbed up a plant in our passion only to have it be the bane of our garden when we discover it's true nature.   The Stachys above, also known as Giant Hedge Nettle is such a plant for me.  I saw it along a creek bank where I used to work and mindlessly dug up a start to plant in my garden because the humming birds loved it.  The flowers are a nice color and it looks good all summer, but it has an annoyingly bad habit of coming up in the middle of other plants and shrubs.

Viola corsica

It isn't that these plants don't have some redeeming qualities, they often do. Take Viola corsica with its dark leaves and beautiful blue flowers for instance.  Though pretty, this little plant seeds about with wild abandon, encroaching upon other space it can.  It provides some pretty amazing contrasts when it mingles with its neighbors making it hard to want to rip out, but soon it becomes evident that it does indeed want every bare spot of soil in the garden for its own and our love of it turns to resentment.

To be honest it's our fault and not the fault of the plant.  Its more about their traits not working within the confines of our garden, our style of gardening and our over riding need to maintain control in our gardens that often makes it impossible for us work with them.

Humulus lupulus 'Aureus'
My love-hate relationship

My Golden Hops, as beautiful as it is, has a nasty habit of sending out underground runners 3 feet from its base.  This means they are popping up right next to the pathway to our front door.  Nothing says "Welcome home!" like clingy rough Hops stems grabbing at my legs as pass by it.  I finally had enough last year and decided to try and dig it out and set about chopping at it madly.  After I was finished I was went into a short bit of mourning at what I had just done.  Its a tough plant, I had a feeling it would be back, which it is and now have some mixed emotions about it's return.  At least I know what to expect and hopefully can keep ahead the runners.  Trumpet vine is another plant that does this sort of thing and I want one of those too when I can find the right spot for it.  (Am I crazy?)

Linarea purpurea

Often times our definition of a weedy plant is formed purely from our need to feel in control of our garden so self sowing or creeping plants just freak us out.  There are gardeners who love chaos and those who want perfection.  The type of plants these gardeners enjoy can be quite different because of what they will put up with.  Linarea is a free seeding plant and I love it, though I know some who hate it because they cannot control where it pops up and the last thing they want to have to be bothered with is seedlings.  Personally I think they are missing out but to each his own and I get where they are coming from...we have enough weed seedlings to deal with so who wants a plant that seeds around which can make the garden look unkempt.

Geranium sanguineum

Management of flowering perennials is the key to keeping the monster in the cage.  Geranium sanguineum can become weedy if its not cut back in time and goes to seed.  I'm finding my failure to do so has born many new plants in all corners of my garden which will multiply exponentially if I don't get cracking on a little birth control for this beauty.

Arum italicum
The heirloom plant from hell

Some plants are just plain greedy for space, running over the top of everything around them until they are the last plants standing.  They can be really beautiful but are the devil's spawn, gobbling up great swaths of space and are impossible to get rid of like Arum Lily (Arum italicum).  I recently did some research on how to get rid of Arum italicum and have decided it is truly an evil plant.  It's even made the noxious weed list in many states here in the U.S.   So don't ever bring it home to your garden or you will never be rid of it.  Grape Hyacinth and Wood Hyacinth are two others that once you have them you will always have them thought they are not as evil as the Arum Lily.

Phlox paniculata  'David'

Thugs have roots that grow to China or take years to wear out or when you try to dig them up the tiniest piece of root will sprout a new plant like the beloved "Garden Phlox" so many of us grow.  It is such a beautiful plant but I've discovered that even the pieces of root the moles kick round in their tunnels will form new plants so what started out as two clumps in my garden is now seven with no help from me.  At this rate my whole entire front yard will be filled with them.


Oh and finally, be ware of some ornamental grasses like "Ribbon Grass"...any grass that fills a pot quickly and is a runner will take off with wild abandon in the garden.  It's great for a ditch bank but not in a garden...at least that is my opinion.  It does not have good garden manners.

I know there are many many more thuggish garden plants out there and this post could go on forever but I'd like to hear your stories.  Do you have plants that have gotten away from you?  Funny or sad or just mad, I'd love to hear them.

~Patty~

Weedy Wednesday

Well if you have followed me for a while you know I don't think like most people...or maybe a little off to the side from how most people think.  So with that said I came up with my own version of a series of Wednesday's special posts.  We are not going to have any wordless around here.  I won't stand for it.  I like words too much.   So what each Wednesday we are having Weedy Wednesday instead.

Weeds in the perennial beds...oh but it makes it look like a prairie!

We all have weeds, but weeds versus garden plants, what makes the difference?  For me it is more of a "what I can put up with" sort of thing than anything else.  I actually like many weeds.  After all they are plants.  Some of them have a rich history, some are edible and some are actually kind of pretty.  And personally I think as gardeners, we get too fussy about our plant collections and even snobbish and miss out on things because of it.

Plant brat, Rosa gallica 'Versicolor'

Sometimes that snobbery reaches around and bites us in the fanny when a plant we think we are so smart planting gets away from us and takes over our garden.  Case in point; I have plants I thought were so cool to have in my garden that I have discovered aren't really so cool after all and consider to be bigger weeds than a lot of common weeds that reside in my garden naturally.  Such is, Rosa gallica 'Versicolor' for me.  She is an absolute brat!

Brat thicket before I got after her.

She has this rather thuggish, not-so-lovely habit of sending out underground runners that pop up everywhere and of course by everywhere I mean in the middle of a clump of favorite perennials or next to a shrub where I specifically only wanted my crocus to be.  Someone told me once, "Oh just dig out what you don't want." Well, that my dear, is easier said than done as one must perform horticultural surgery to extract her completely from such situations which means digging her and the other plant up and if she can't be pulled out cleanly she will have to be cut out and roots severed.  So instead I tried killing it off last fall with stump and vine killer painted onto the freshly cut off stems.

It worked really well or so I thought until I looked around this spring and found she was a sneaky little rose and had managed to get further out of bounds than I thought.  I can hear her sniggering at me as I write this.  I may as well relax about it for now and get the benefit of her blooms this spring.  Who knows, maybe I'll find a good spot to let her run wild.  Now that would be nice.

Copyright © 2011 by Patty Hicks
All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All reviews must include author's name and a link back to this blog.