Wildflower Walk March 3, 2012

At the bottom of this post there's an embedded video about edible weeds including wintercress which we were looking at this morning and which is abundant thoughout Medford Leas.   

It was drizzling this morning and Jane Bourquin, the walk leader, and Maggie Heineman (that's me) were the only ones who showed up.   Jane had scouted during the week and neither the skunk cabbage nor the bloodroot were in bloom.   However Jane had seen Herb Robert in bloom.  This page on Wikipedia has a short explanation and a photo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geranium_robertianum    A website in King County Washington has this to say on it's "noxious weeds"  site.

Herb Robert
Geranium robertianum

Herb Robert escaped from ornamental plantings and thrives in forested communities as the dominant ground cover, displacing native and beneficial plants.

Herb Robert's 5-petaled flowers are in all shades of pink and sometimes white. Overall the plant is covered with short glandular hairs, giving the plant a sticky feel and a distinct odor (sometimes this plant is known as "stinky Bob"). Shallow, weak roots make this plant easy to pull although large infestations can be highly labor-intensive to remove.

I took a couple of photos.  For size the closeup includes Jane's thumbnail, but one of the five petals had dropped off.

The Herb Robert was quite abundant down the firelane just a little past Parking Lot C.  

Weeds were coming up through the mulch around the trees - there was a lot around the flowering crababble.  Without flowers we had to do some studying to determine that the weed we were looking at was not chickweed but wintercress.



Chickweed flowers (Stella media) are easy to identify and now we know the difference between the leaves of chickweed and wintercress.   Follow the link to mlra wildflowers site to see chickweed.  Wintercress isn't on our site.  It should be.  Wintercress has a rosette of basal leaves which are unmistakable -- look at the base of the crabapple.

http://mlra.org/wildflowers/flowers/Stellaria_media.htm

Jane had brought a bowl of weeds with her -- along with the wintercress there was some Gill on the Ground. http://mlra.org/wildflowers/flowers/Glechoma_hederacea.htm   

I took some photos of Jane's poster of edible weeds and while writing this blog, googling for wintercress, I came up with an interesting video of edible weeds -- including wintercress.  This video is one of a series on edible weeds.