Weeds of the Friendly City (part one) ***

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

       The first so-called weed I encountered was (you guessed it)...none other than dandelion (Taraxicum officinale), right at the corner of Worth Avenue and Union. Of all nuisances, this plant least deserves the name. The culinary literature on dandelions is vast: from its roots or leaves or flowers you can make dandelion tea, dandelion salad, dandelion wine, even a coffee substitute, all of which are healthy and tasty. I like the French name: pisse-en-lits (pissabeds), which leaves no doubt about its diuretic properties.

dandelion: don't eat it just before bed

         
     Next was sow thistle (Sonchus sp.): a nasty customer. I haven't been able to discover any of this plant's virtues, except, maybe, that it sometimes sports a bright yellow flower. But most of the time it just squats there covered in spines, glowering at passerby. The photo below was taken on Warren Street.

sow thistle: a tough cookie

        I took a detour onto the railroad near The Finnish Line. Everyone knows train tracks are full of weeds. It wasn't a disappointment. On the margins, near some adjoining backyards, it was hard to miss
what I think are stocks: Matthiola bicornis. In some parts of the US, it is considered a pest but it's hard to think of such a beautiful plant as noxious. Neat colors: pink, purple and white; and on warm June nights it releases an intoxicating perfume.

stocks: a weed or not a weed?

     In the above photo, incidentally, the green plant at the left of center is the infamous garlic mustard, which has managed to make itself unwanted everywhere. It releases allelopathic chemicals, which poison the soil to discourage competition. In Hudson, or at least near Union Street, it is not thriving. But downstate, large areas have been taken over by this ugly and boring plant.

    Right next to the stocks was a fine example of a native plant which for some reason has a bad rep.
Milkweed (Asclepias sp.) is nothing much to look at before it blooms, but afterward, it opens an umbrella of pink flowers which attract butterflies and smell like hyacinths. The reason for the resentment against it might lie in a comment made by a Hudson gardener. When I happily pointed out she had a milkweed growing in her garden, she gave me a dubious look, "I have to pull them out constantly or they will take everything over." For a good review of the uses of milkweed, see the Wikipedia entry for Asclepias.  Reader Tom De Pietro points out that milkweed is the food of monarch butterfly larvae.

milkweed: just getting started

       Soon, on Union Street, I came upon a patch of bedstraw (sometimes known as catchweed or cleavers), Galium aparine. Now, THIS is a weed. It is inedible. Its flowers are ignorable. It grows in a tangled mass, strangling every plant in its path. Plus, it has tiny prickles on its stems and leaves that grab
whatever they can, including clothing and dog fur. No clear virtues here. All in all, a thuggish plant considered a pest in many states, and rightly so. See the mugshot below.

bedstraw: who would want this in a mattress?

          A little further down Union, as if to relive the bad vibes, was a bright clump of  Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus to be exact). It is a member of the poppy family, which is confirmed by  its many medicinal uses. But you wouldn't know it by its modest four-petalled yellow flowers. Greater Celandine looks frail, but will gladly find a home in cracks in walls and sidewalks.

Greater Celandine: looks frail but don't be fooled

         

       Poking out of a fence, to escape the well-tended garden that lay behind it, were a few shoots of yarrow ( Achillea millefolium). Here's a weed that has been bred by plant fanciers to produce large bunches of sulphur yellow or scarlet flowers. However, here was the mother of them all, ready to bloom in small umbrellas of tight-packed ivory pearls.  How did this plant take on the name of Achilles? Maybe it's because yarrow leaves are supposed to stop bleeding.

 *** SOME OF THESE PLANTS ARE DESCRIBED AS HAVING MEDICINAL USES. DO NOT USE THEM WITHOUT A PHYSICIAN'S SUPERVISION.  DO NOT COLLECT THEM FROM PRIVATE PROPERTY OR FROM LAND THAT HAS BEEN TREATED WITH PESTICIDES, OR EXPOSED TO  POLLUTANTS!

Peep this.....

It was in the last weekend of April I heard them, in the daytime. 

Spring peepers...those tiny treedwellers whose metallic calls zing out from woods all over the northeast as soon as the vernal equinox arrives. We have these little amphibians here in Hudson, too, notably in the woodlot down the road from the Vinyl Village.  Last year they punctuated my sleep with their frenzied mating songs.  Now, in May 2013, all I can hear at night are a few feeble peeps.  

What changed?

 Apparently, the weather.  There hasn't been much rain lately and these frogs need moisture, especially small temporary forest pools, for their eggs to hatch.  That's why they have been desperately calling during broad daylight, even though they usually buzz on damp evenings.  Lately, I've heard a few at night, but at 5% of the level of the Spring 2012 frogfest.

Here's a nugget: the Spring Peeper frog (Pseudacris crucifer) is equipped for an early start: it survives  temperatures as low as 18 degrees because it can thin its blood with a kind of antifreeze.

These tiny frogs eat grubs and flies: like the turkey vulture, they get rid of noxious stuff. They can survive nasty weather: like the catalpa tree, they know how to wait for better times.

Another useful citizen.

don't be fooled: little but loud