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Yellow wood-sorrel weed can be friend or foeBy Lee ReichThe Associated Press Can any plant really be called a “favorite” weed? Yes it can, if you take “favorite” to mean most likely to win a competition. The competition, in this case, is between the weed that causes the most trouble and the one that causes the least. In many gardens, the best weed and the worst one happen to be the same plant — yellow wood-sorrel. The best weed is an upright form of the species, and the worst is a creeping form. Yellow wood-sorrel is easily recognized by its three heart-shaped leaflets joined at their base to look like a clover leaf, and by its buttery yellow flowers, each with five petals. When you come upon a plant of the upright wood-sorrel, its large size suggests that a major weeding chore is about to begin. But reach down and grab this weed, pull, and a pleasant surprise follows. A large patch of it vanishes because it’s just one plant whose single stem is strong enough to wrench the whole works from the soil, roots and all. At first, the creeping form of yellow wood-sorrel, with its smaller leaves and slender stems, would seem the more innocuous of the two wood-sorrels. But its many stems hug the ground, sending roots into the soil all along their length. Try to pull up the plant and these slender stems snap off, and the plant continues creeping along. The only way to successfully pull up the creeping plant is to attack it when it’s young. Once a plant has aged and spread, you have to skim off the top inch of soil and remove the whole clump as a mat. Young plants too often grow unnoticed because the coppery tinge of their leaves camouflages them on the soil. The best approach is sometimes to just persuade yourself that the plant is an inconspicuous, perhaps not even bad-looking, ground cover there. Different weeds seem to vie for the “best” and “worst” in different years. One year, it might be ground ivy, whose trailing stems and roundish leaves are easily wrenched loose from the top of fluffy soil or mulch. Another, it might be quackgrass, with needle-like, underground stems. Mulch this one to death. You may wonder about weeds like dandelions, thistles, lamb’s-quarters, purslane, and the like. In many gardens, they’re not problems. How about yours? [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
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