Weeds — getting to the root of the problem
Lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) or fig buttercup
While you may not recognize the name, lesser celandine (or fig buttercup), I’ll bet you’ve seen her face.
With deceptively pretty buttercup-like yellow flowers and glossy, heart-shaped leaves that hug the ground. A tiny patch is quite pretty, but don’t be deceived. Lesser celandine is a robust, non-native thug, that will quickly take over your entire garden or woodland, choking out more desirable plants. Given a foothold, it will also take over your lawn.
The fig buttercup has spread like wildfire through woodland areas in Ontario, Quebec and the northeastern United States. Lesser celandine arrived in my garden a few years ago. It seemed innocent enough, pretty yellow flowers appeared in April along with the daffodils. Within a few seasons, it starts to aggressively spread and then you realize how tricky it is to remove. The plants spread by seed and by tiny tubers — if you don’t get all of them, the plants will be back the following year with a vengeance.
Last year, I declared war on a large carpet-like mass of lesser celandine — I’m talking about a whole afternoon spent digging them up. You have to be sure to remove the whole plant, including the bulbous roots. Watch for additional sprouts once you’ve finished clearing an area.
This year, the brute has returned in a somewhat weakened form, but I can’t let it settle in. I spent a few hours on my knees routing out a large patch just before Easter — this patch is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg — I will keep after them.
Lady’s thumb (Polygonum persicaria)
Until I did a little online research, I did not know lady’s thumb by name, but I am well acquainted with her habit of sneaking up on me in the garden.
Like the fig buttercup, Lady’s thumb starts out innocently enough, appearing on the scene with deep green leaves marked with reddish edges poking up through patches of echinacea.
This is her ruse — she pretends to be echinacea and by the time you realize all is not right, she’s laced the soil with roots that stretch to the very edge of the garden. If you miss a piece of root in the weeding process, more plants will pop up.
Weeding them out is fairly easy in April and even in to early May before they get a strong foothold. By the time the echinacea are coming into flower, the lady’s thumbs are as tall as the echinacea and you’ll need a strong back to get them out.
Appearing in summer, small, pinkish flowers densely line narrow spikes held above the leaves, but don’t them them bloom — they will self-seed profusely.
Lady’s thumb is an introduced annual in the buckwheat/ smartweed family, appearing on cultivated land, ditches and roadsides, across a wide range of soil types throughout Ontario.
Native Americans used the leaves in treatments of stomach pains and poison ivy. They also rubbed the plant on their horses as an insect repellant.
Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata)
I’ve been battling an invasion of garlic mustard for several years, and just as I convince myself that I’ve won the battle, they sneak back into the garden, usually along the back fence, giving credence to another one of their names, “Jack-by-thefence.”
Garlic mustard was brought to North America in the early 1800s as an edible herb, but is now considered an invasive weed in many areas across southern Ontario and Quebec and south to North Carolina and Kentucky in the U.S. It can invade undisturbed forests (I’ve photographed the seed pods at Woodend Conservation Area) and it will displace treasured wildflowers such as trillium, trout lily, white wood aster and others. It is a biennial, meaning it grows a tidy (think innocent looking) rosette of leaves the first season, and then shoots up to about a metre tall the following year bearing clusters tiny white flowers followed by long seed pods that release hundreds of seeds. The seeds can remain in the soil for 30 years and still be able to sprout!
If you are game for a little backyard foraging, garlic mustard is edible. The young leaves can be distinguished from other mustard greens, they give off a strong scent of garlic when crushed. Weed out the young leaves and they are edible, they get a bitter taste as they mature; the flowers can be chopped and tossed into salads. Garlic mustard roots taste very spicy, some say they taste like horseradish. (Visit ediblewildfood.com for recipes.)