Looking Down On a Lawn

A lot of people, if they could see it, would look down on the nature of my backyard lawn. It at least meets one of the criteria of a lawn, in that it is regularly mowed. When looking down on a lawn, or "lawn", one might as well identify the plants growing there. Warning: The photographs you are about to see may appall those who take pride in a lawn's appearance and pedigree. There is True Green, and then there is the Green Truth, herein depicted in unflinching detail.

Broadleaf plantain (Plantago major),

 a mixture of white clover and violet (human grazers will find the violet leaves and flowers more tasty than turfgrass),

 wood sorrel (each leaflet is heart-shaped, while clover's are round). Wood sorrel has a taste made sour by oxalic acid, and is different from sorrel.

If mock strawberry, an inedible strawberry from India, is allowed to spread, it creates a kind of green pavement, growing low enough to survive beneath the mowing blades.

Three-seeded mercury, along the edges of the lawn.

Lest anyone think the lawn entirely devoid of grass, there are patches of Japanese stiltgrass, with its broad leaf blades--the same annual species that carpets woodlands--

and nimblewill, a blueish green, narrow-bladed grass.

The yellow-green blades that become prominent in lawns in late summer are nutsedge, another non-native.

Nutsedge is very easy to pull out, but if allowed to grow to maturity, it looks like this.

Another prosperous weed that has made surprising inroads into the lawn this year is heal-all, a prostrate plant in the mint family that likely originated in Europe (rudely left out of the photo shoot).

All of these excel at playing Lawnmower Limbo.

Weeding With Confidence--Part 1

To weed a garden requires knowing what to weed out. A weed is defined as "a plant out of place," which means that most any plant could be called a weed if it's not growing where you want it to.

In this garden, the preference is for plants that are native to the region, have some attractive attributes, don't grow into trees that will shade everything else, and don't spread aggressively by seed or rhizome.

So let's look at this photo of plants that popped up this spring. It's a mix of native and non-native species--Virginia creeper, willow herb, wood sorrel, nutsedge, violet, and one seedling of cutleaf coneflower. Since they're in the middle of a garden path, they all came out. Virginia creeper (five leaflets, lower lefthand corner) is a native vine that's fine for untended areas, but much too expansionist for a garden. Nutsedge (grassy looking leaves, light green) is a non-native sedge that pulls up easily but keeps popping up, requiring eternal vigilance. Wood sorrel (clover-like leaves) is a ubiquitous presence in gardens and greenhouses, with a little yellow flower and acid taste. Willow herb (narrow leaves in pairs) is a weedy native that sprouts abundantly from seed. It has a promising form but miniscule flowers. Violets are attractive and tasty, but not in a garden path.

Only one plant was worth potting up for later use--the cutleaf coneflower seedling, its two broad, oddly lobed leaves visible here in a blowup from the original photo. If given a good place to grow, it will become a tall, stately wildflower bedecked with bright yellow flowers. The seedheads in turn attract a second wave of yellow, in the form of goldfinches vying for a snack.