Posts Tagged ‘seeds’
garden escapes: vectors
The term ‘vector’ has different meanings depending on the discipline. In university I took two engineering courses that occupied me in the study of ‘vector’ mathematics!
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In biology, a ‘vector’ is any organism or physical entity that moves an element from one place to another. The idea of vectors is used in epidemiology, in reproductive biology, and in ecology. When I try to understand garden escapes, I am interested in vectors for seed or vegetative dispersal.
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Once a garden is abandoned, the plants there will either die, persist or escape. They escape by way of rhizomes (horizontal roots), rooting of plant parts (suckering) or spreading of seeds.
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Seeds or pieces of plant can be spread to other locations by various vectors: water, soil, air or animals. Seeds, for example, can be carried along by water in a ditch, or can spread by wind that carries seeds on specially adapted seed parts.
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air as a vector for seed transport
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Animal vectors include insects, birds, mammals (including humans). Some of this is deliberate (a squirrel burying acorns) and some is accidental (humans spreading seed by moving soil from one area to another).
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squirrel as a vector for transport of seed
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The various garden escapes I have encountered usually have their preferred vectors.
- lupines- seeds carried through air as a projectile
- orange day-lilies- rhizomes through soil
- yellow loosestrife- rhizomes through soil
- creeping bellflowers- rhizomes through soil
- rose bushes- roots through soil; humans who dig up and replant shoots
- grape vines – suckering, seeds, humans
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This is a poem about a human vector (me):
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paths to come and go on
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Old rugosa rose,
brought the stem and root,
across the ferry
from Grand Manan,
in a banana peel.
Every summer pale
pink blooms on an arc
of thorns, biggest hips
you ever saw. Rose
will outlast the house
and all who live here.
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Virginia creeper
dug From the river bank
below the willow
on Waterloo Row.
Overcomes the pole
and every summer
the power people
pull the creeper down.
Red in the autumn,
sneaks across the lawn,
started down the drive
and along the road.
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The staghorn sumac
pinnate leaves spreading
cast purple shadows,
give a tropical air
to the driveway.
Brought the root and slip
from the gravel pit
in Beaver Dam.
New shoots every year.
Headed direction
of Nasonworth,
last time I looked.
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Note that this project ‘garden escapes’ is funded under a Creations Grant from artsnb (the New Brunswick Arts Board).
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All my best!
Jane
abandoned gardens: how they escape
“… some plants will
persist, some will languish
and die, some will escape into forest,
or edges of hayfields,
roads and ditches.”
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Escape artists. How do those plants we see in ditches and fields get there?
Some move by seed. Some by vegetative reproduction (by horizontal roots or by rooting of a part of the plant).
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A good example of ‘escape by seed’ is the lupin. The lupin sets its seed in pods. When they dry, the seeds are launched as projectiles and so can travel quite far in a single generation.
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A good example of ‘escape by vegetative reproduction’ is the orange day-lily. It only rarely sets seed. It moves along ditches or into other locations by rhizomes (horizontal roots).
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” … its names describe
where orange finds a home:
ditch lily, railroad lily
roadside lily, wash-house lily
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outhouse lily.”
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In New Brunswick, you don’t have to drive far to see an orange day-lily or a lupin.
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This work was made possible by a Creations Grant from artsnb!
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All my best.
Staying home,
wearing a mask when I escape.
Jane
Gardening in my Veg-trugs
In late May, I planted my Veg-trugs. Veg-trugs (available from Lee Valley Tools, Halifax) are small portable garden troughs perfect for a deck garden.
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This year I have planted three vegetables:
cucumber
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zucchini
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yellow wax bean
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As you can see, all are up. The maple seeds around each plant will sprout and will take lots of time to remove.
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I’ll update on progress as the summer unfolds.
All my best,
Jane
harvesting colour – mail order weld and woad
The final manuscript of poetry from my ‘harvesting colour’ project is due at the end of October. However, I don’t think these adventures with using natural dyes are ending. I have enjoyed this project so much and I am so proud of my basket of home-dyed, hand spun yarns.
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some of my balls of hand dyed wool
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I took a step towards next year’s batch of yarn by thinking about starting a dyer’s garden (so many of the interesting plants I have read about are not available locally). I would love to try growing some of those traditional medieval-sounding plants in my dyeing. Weld, Woad and Woadwaxen – don’t they sound almost magical? Most of the plants used through the ages for dyeing have the species name of tinctoria, tinctorius, tinctorium, or tinctorum (from the Latin tingo, tingere – to dip, to soak, to dye).
Examples of plants with ‘Dyer’s’ in the common name or ‘tinct‘ in the species name are:
- Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) – flowers give pink or yellow
- Dyer’s Alkanet (Alkanna tinctoria (L.) Tausch) – roots give purple-grey
- Dyer’s Chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria L.) – flowers or leaves give a greeny-yellow
- Dyer’s Mulberry, Fustic (Chlorophora tinctoria (L.) Gaudich.) – wood gives a greeny-yellow
- Dyer’s Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria Nutt.) – flowers give an orange or brown
- Dyer’s Greenwood, Woadwaxen (Genista tinctoria L.) – plant tops give a pale green or yellow
- Dyer’s Woad, Woad (Isatis tinctoria L.) – leaves give blue
- Weld or Dyer’s Rocket (Reseda luteola L.) – plants tops give yellow
- Madder (Rubia tinctorum L.) – roots give red
- Dyer’s Knotweed, Japanese Indigo (Polygonum tinctorium Aiton) – leaves give blue
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To begin with, I sent to Richters Herb Specialists ( https://www.richters.com/ ) in Goodwood, Ontario for Weld and Woad. And I have Rita Buchanan’s book A Dyer’s Garden to help me get the best results.
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packets of seed for planting next spring
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Well, the seeds have now arrived. Next spring I’ll find a sheltered spot with the right conditions and try to grow these two. I listen to the tiny seeds shaking in their packets and wish for May.
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
autumn black and white
Roaming around the countryside, the weekend before last, deluged by color from orange and yellow trees and crimson fields of blueberry, I was interested by the contrast in the ditches. A month ago, they were a riot of yellow or purple as the goldenrods, tansies and asters presented themselves, species by species. Now, they are done with blooming and are in the business of releasing their seeds.
To attract pollinators for setting their seeds, flowers put on a competitive display of color and form. But dispersing their seeds is a different process altogether. Many depend on the wind to carry their seeds to ideal sites for next year’s bloom and the wind is color-blind. Grey, white and even black are the dominant colors in the ditches.
Seeds dispersed by wind either flutter to the ground, or float in the air. Often, they are assisted by a special seed form. For example, maple keys are flattened and aerodynamic so they spin and travel some distance as they fall. Seeds of goldenrod and aster have feathery white bristles (called the pappus, a modified sepal) to help them float through the air. The term pappus comes from the Latin pappus meaning ‘old man’, an apt description of the white heads of the flowers, gone to seed.
Another species in the ditch, Common Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare L.), also known as Golden-buttons, ordinarily has bright yellow flowers in a flat head. Now, it has joined the black and white revue, showing black seed-heads against feathery leaves.
The seeds of Tansy, in a form called an achene, have no special adaptation for flight. This time of year, these seeds are dry and ready for dispersal by gravity.
autumn black
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dry leaves
silent
colorless
wonder withdrawn, into the vortex of
no hue, no delight
cones suppressed, rods perceive
absence, black seed in heads of Tansy
absorb all light, feathered foliage
darkest green, approaching black
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© Jane Tims 2011
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