Flowers Out Of Place Are Called Weeds The flat heartshaped petals of the sulphur cinquefoil provide good landing sites for insects. Notice the small crab spider on the lower blossom. I couldn’t have struck a better day for tackling one of my least favorite jobs, pulling weeds in the raspberry patch. Fortunately there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the temperature hovered around 78 degrees F., and a gentle breeze helped keep me somewhat cool. Anyone seeing our garden from a distance would think that the two long rows of tall white-to-pink flowering plants made up some type of edible crop. Unfortunately the chest-high slightly fragrant flowering plants are tall daisy fleabanes, weeds that, like their relatives, produce many seeds and appear to like our garden very well. The other abundant weeds I pulled mercilessly today included bladder campion, butter and eggs, creeping jenny, quack grass, ox-eye daisy, Queen Anne’s lace, common St. John’s-wort and sulphur cinquefoil. Every time I take a close look at the sulphur cinquefoil I admire its rich yellow color and especially its heart-shaped petals. This is a rose-like flower of the rural roadsides that is also called upright cinquefoil. Its scientific name is Potentilla recta. Many of you are very familiar with different potentilla shrubs that have received much interest in recent years and have been widely planted because of their continuous flowering habit and the little care required. Years ago the medicine experts considered some of the wild potentillas to be very potent, loaded with various healing qualities, and hence the name of potentilla. The species name of the sulphur cinquefoil, "recta," means upright. The leaves are seven-divided and palmate, and its flowers are about one inch across. The word "cinquefoil" comes about from "cinque" referring to five, and "feuilles" which alludes to leaves. Getting back to the sulphur cinquefoil, I have often noticed that the unusually flat nature of its blossoms, thereby providing very level "landing platforms," naturally attracts many insects and spiders. You can expect to see especially the well-camouflaged flower spiders, also referred to as crab spiders, whose general color will match that of the petals on which they wait in ambush for visiting insects. The common St. John’s-wort, very widespread alien weed of roadsides and neglected fields (and our garden), has attractive deep yellow flowers born on stiff, upright, many-branched stems. It is a difficult weed to eradicate. Pick a leaf and examine it closely with a hand lens with the leaf held up to the bright sky. You will observe dozens of tiny light spots, like pin-holes, which permit light to come through. I call them windows. I’m quite sure that this feature is found on all St. John’s-wort plants including the beautiful native shrubby St. John’s-wort. The "Queen" (Anne’s lace) will soon reign supreme over ditches, fallow fields and fencerows in the near future. The world’s experts in the manufacture of lace may reside in Belgium or Italy but the queen of the lace-maker’s art graces practically every roadside, waste place and dry unused field in eastern United States. A queen’s title was too good for many farmers who lowered the name to wild carrot. Much of its success can be traced to the simple fact that it is a biennial capable of producing upwards of 7000 to 8000 seeds per large plant of nine or 10 flower heads. The seeds usually germinate in late summer and fall. The next year a small rosette of feathery carrot-like leaves and a rather thin fleshy root develop. This strong starchy taproot easily survives the winter and will mature the following July into the magnificent flowering plant. A weedy wildflower whose delicate blue color clashes with the lavender-purple of the spotted knapweed, which will soon be in flower, is the chicory. Backlighted by the early morning sun, its delicate blue petals shout for attention. This is a morning flower whose blossoms usually close by early afternoon. Perhaps the best definition of a weed states that a plant is a weed when it grows where it is not wanted. They are not intentionally sown and possess more undesirable than desirable qualities. Some are known to clog lakes and streams, serve as hosts for crop diseases, and affect people’s health. Ask those who suffer from hayfever. They’ll tell you all about ragweed, one of the very worst weeds in the world. People ask about taking living plants of certain showy weeds home (including out of state) with them for transplanting. In answer I give a resounding NO! Some of our noxious weeds spread rapidly enough by themselves without helping them. If you wish to enjoy them, enjoy them where they grow. The same applies to all of our native plants. And if you take a bouquet of weeds home with you, be sure to dispose of them so as not to spread the seeds. Learn the bad along with the good. Many are beautiful, can be freely picked and are interesting to study and to photograph. Even though most are aliens, as were our ancestors who very likely brought the weeds with them, they too are here to stay and we might just as well make the best of them! This column appeared in the Door County Advocate on 07/19/2002. © Copyright 2002 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.