Working inside for most of the week has certain disadvantages, especially at this time of year. There is so much blooming that I do not go out to see. I did not get many pictures of camellias or flowering cherries while they bloomed, although some camellias continue to bloom sporadically. Some azaleas are also finished blooming. Rhododendrons are blooming nicely now, but I have not started getting pictures of them. Instead, I got pictures of a few weeds and their associates from just outside of where I work inside.

1. Broom! It is one of the most aggressively invasive exotic weeds of the Santa Cruz Mountains. No one knows if it is Scotch, Spanish or French. It is probably French, but we know it as Scotch.

2. Dandelion infests most lawns. It was probably imported for greens. I will not eat greens that grow in lawns where Rhody does what he goes outside to do. I should move some to the garden.

3. Periwinkle is a naturalized exotic species here, but is not so naturalized farther inland, or in urban areas where lacks space to migrate. I actually planted it where I lived while in high school.

4. Forget me not, as seen in the upper right corner of the previous picture, is naturalized in riparian situations, but is also too delightful to be perceived as a weed. How could anyone dislike it?

5. Pacific Coast iris is not actually a weed. It is not even exotic. This one is a hybrid of a few native species, and was planted intentionally. I would just prefer the ‘unimproved’ Iris douglasiana.

6. Rhody puts the ‘+’ in ‘Weeds +’, which is the title for this week. Perhaps this should have been the first of these six; but then no one would have bothered with the remaining five. Priorities.

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:

https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

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49 thoughts on “Six on Saturday: Weeds +”

    1. Perwinkle is such a weed in the redwood forest, but can be an asset to landscapes just a few miles away in the Santa Clara Valley. I would not add it to a garden near a part of the forest that is not yet infested with it, but would not have a problem growing it in town.

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    1. Pacific Coast iris hybrids are much more colorful than the individual species, but are also resilient to the long summers here. Once established, they survive without supplemental irrigation, although their foliage can get rather shabby through autumn and winter. I still miss the original Iris douglasiana that is native and used to be more prominent here. It is not as useful for landscape purposes, and certainly does not last well as a cut flower, but is such a delightful wildflower in small colonies. Much larger colonies lived on the Montara Mountains just south of San Francisco. I picked them when I was a kid, even though I knew they would shrivel before I got home.

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    1. Well, I so not did most of these out either. They mostly live in areas that are not landscapes and on the edge of the forest. I try to get the broom when I can. Rhody does not help with that sort of thing. He has his own sort of work to tend to, which is what he is doing in the picture.

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  6. We’re often urged to let dandelions grow because they’re good for insects but I’ve rarely seen any insects on them. If they were Dahlias they’d be no good because they’re double flowers, except they’re composite, not double. I get lots of bees on my semi double Dahlias. Dandelions I get rid of.

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    1. For most situations, I do not even try to get rid of them. It is futile. One lived in a crack in the driveway at my former home as long as I was there, for sixteen years! It is probably still there! I like the greens, but am hesitant to grow them in the garden. I probably will, but will get rid of them if they bloom too much or get shabby. There are other greens to grow.

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      4. He does not hear it from me. I sometimes address him as ‘faccia brutta’ (ugly face). He just wags his tail more. Rhody ignores me in four languages. He believes his crew though. They really pamper him.

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  9. These weeds are well known to us here in Southern Oregon, though we seem to have fewer problems with broom than I recall further north. I am also on the lookout for iris douglisiana.

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    1. Is forget me not native there? If not, is there another species of the genus that is native there? I can not remember where it came from. Online research is vague, as if no one can remember where it came from.

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  10. Is broom the same as gorse? In the UK it is known as a heathland shrub rather than a weed. I too planted periwinkles for ground cover and it took a couple of years before they even flowered properly – maybe they have lulled me into a false sense of security.

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    1. No; I though that gorse was the same as broom. They are related, but not the same. Broom gets bigger, but is not thorny.
      Your periwinkle may be Vinca minor rather than Vinca major. It seems to be that Vinca minor is more difficult to remove from the soil, but it does not migrate as aggressively as Vinca major does, and does not disperse seed (here).

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  11. Weeds or flowers in the wrong place 🙂 I recognise many, haha… some I actually bought (periwinkle in garden centres when I was back in the UK). I can imagine if you «are landscaping for a living, while beautiful, how frustrating they are for you.

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    1. I do not do landscaping, but work with landscapes, including some that are infested with these weeds. Periwinkle generally gets to stay where it is established, until something better can replace it. While I was in high school, I actually took periwinkle from where it was a weed, and put it into the suburban garden where I lived. I is still there, and can not migrate anywhere.

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    1. That is odd. Someone else mentioned that forget me nots do not do well in his region either, and he might be within their native range! In your region, they may not like the minimal chill. We do not get much chill, but we get more than your region gets.

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      4. They are dead and decaying prior to the mildly warm summer weather here. I know it is part of their natural life cycle, but their natural life cycle may be longer where spring weather does not get so warm so soon. They probably do not mind heat because they are dead and gone before the weather gets hot. They are more likely to be bothered by a lack of chill through winter. Without chill to let them know when it is winter, they do not know when it is spring.

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      7. It would be too warm too early if they start to grow well, and then die off. With humidity, they should be more tolerant of warmth than they are in drier climates.

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  14. A few years ago, I went on a tour of local gardens. I was staring at a tall bush with small yellow flowers all over it when the gardener walked up. I said, “Is this scotch broom?” He looked at me like I was nuts. “Scotch what?” I said, “Oh no, my mistake, never mind.” They’ve never heard of it here.

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    1. Is that what it was? There are actually a few cultivars of it that are supposed to be sterile. First of all, I do not trust it, regardless of how sterile it is. (Cortaderia selloana cultivars are sterile too, but we all know how well that worked out.) Second of all, regardless of how sterile it is, it still ‘looks’ like broom, and even if we did not already have bad experience with broom, it is not all that pretty!

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      1. It had a fancy pants name and it didn’t look that much like Scotch Broom. I couldn’t explain it to the gardener either. He would’ve been offended if I told him it looked like a common roadside weed in Washington state.

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      2. I know the undesirable brooms as species of Cytisus, but some of the ornamental types are species and cultivars of Genista. I still do not know if they are synonyms of each other.

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