{"id":279,"date":"2007-07-11T15:33:50","date_gmt":"2007-07-11T19:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2007\/07\/11\/weed-this-morning\/"},"modified":"2007-07-11T16:09:32","modified_gmt":"2007-07-11T20:09:32","slug":"weed-this-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2007\/07\/11\/weed-this-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"Weed This Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just back from vacation.  I noticed this morning that a lot of the low sidewalk weeds are in flower.  On the walk to work,  the carpetweed, doorweed, pimpernel and sand spurrey were in evidence, and possibly knawel as well.  I have a feeling that the spotted spurge is about to burst, and the purslane can&#8217;t be far off.  Sowthistles abound, and various solanaceae are of interest; black nightshade in flower, bittersweet nightshade with big new swollen green berries.<\/p>\n<p>But most interesting of all these solanaceae is a charismatic weed, completely new to me!  That hasn&#8217;t happened to me in the city for at least a year.  The weed is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Buffalo Bur (<i>Solanum rostratum<\/i>) (nightshade family) &#8211; Big old papery yellow flowers.  Fascinating pinnately-lobed leaves, reminiscent of white oak.  Cruel, bristling, omnipresent prickles.  Unbelievably wicked-looking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.missouriplants.com\/Yellowalt\/Solanum_rostratum_page.html\">spiny fruit<\/a>.  Apparently this was originally a weed of the great plains, named for its liking for buffalo wallows.  It&#8217;s supposed to have a tumbleweed mechanism of seed dispersal.  Buffalo bur truly has it all!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It was growing in the vacant lot next to my work building. (Where?  I&#8217;ll never tell!)  I&#8217;ve also seen crown vetch in there: which I think is the only place in Massachusetts where I&#8217;ve run into it.  It&#8217;s common as all get-out around Sodus Bay; I suppose it was probably planted for erosion control.  There&#8217;s a leguminous shrub growing in that site too, and maybe it&#8217;s also a rarity which came in with the construction dirt?  I burn with anticipation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just back from vacation. I noticed this morning that a lot of the low sidewalk weeds are in flower. On the walk to work, the carpetweed, doorweed, pimpernel and sand spurrey were in evidence, and possibly knawel as well. I have a feeling that the spotted spurge is about to burst, and the purslane can&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[407],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}