Saturday, January 5, 2013

Be gone, invasives!

Happy new year! Thank heavens, 2013 so far has brought moisture. OK, it amounted to less than an inch, but every bit helps!

Today, we had some sunshine so I ventured outside awhile ago to check what's happening in the Meadow. Uh oh. The Malta star-thistle (Centaurea melitensis)––one of our BAD BAD BAD invasive species (up there with bastard cabbage––is sprouting rosettes. Last March, I blogged about this annual thistle after I realized we had it growing in our Wildscape. For several evenings, James and I pulled piles and piles of it, hoping to get it under control. This afternoon, I spent some time, pulling up the few I could find. They're really not hard to identify....

Malta star-thistle has ruffle-edged leaves. 

Even when they're small, the ruffled leaves are obvious.

I used an old fork to grab and pull up the thistles.

Can you spot the Malta star-thistle? It's trying to push out a stork's bill.

2 comments:

Ben said...

Hi Miss Sheryl,

Great post about Malta star-thistle. It's such a problem. You are an amazing invasive hunter!

Your friend,
Ben

Sheryl Smith-Rodgers said...

Hey, thanks, Ben! Thanks for stopping by! Onward in our fight against invasives!!!

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