Weed of the week - Indian (mock) strawberry

Since TPP has no shortage of weeds, the weed of the week shall continue.  This one also generates a lot of queries from people and sometimes calls from the poison control center.  The Indian or mock or false strawberry is a terrible lawn weed, although it is even worse in a strawberry patch.  This is Duchesnea indica (due-kez-knee-ah), indeed a member of the rose family.  It's come up before on this blog.  The physical similarity to the standard strawberry of commerce is quite striking especially it strewing (another story there) habit of spreading by runners (stolons) and plantlets. The leaves are trifoliate and have very similar toothed margins (but not quite the same).  The flower has usually has 5 yellow petals (oops the flower photographed has 6) instead of white or pinkish petals, and they are subtended by a whorl of 3-lobed bracts (opposite the petals) below the 5 sepals (alternate with the petals).  The red strawberry like fruits generate the poisonous queries. It isn't toxic, but the fruit also has no taste.  The dead giveaway though are the achenes (the true fruits); they are red in Indian strawberry; and yellow/tan/brown in true strawberry.
The plant has the potential to be quite invasive especially in lawns but fortunately it is quite susceptible to standard lawn weed herbicides.  Although TPP doesn't like spraying, or have a great dislike of lawn weeds, patches can be easily spot treated before becoming a big problem.  It can be weeded by hand with some difficulty because of the runners and plantlets. Believe it or else, but this plant was human dispersed from its SE Asian place of origin for ornamental purposes.  This is on TPP's never plant this plant list, but you do sometimes find it for sale.

Strawberries & Indian Strawberries

One of the worst weeds of strawberry (Fragaria) is Indian strawberry (Duchesnea indica). In flower and fruit these two species are easy to tell apart (yellow flowers, 5 bracts, red achenes), but early in the season the leaves are quite similar (Indian strawberries have sharper teeth on the leaf margins), but if you aren't sharply observant it can be the devil's own time to weed out the invasive Indian strawberry, especially when fairly abundant. Good thing the Phactor has experience and observational experience to sort them out without any mistakes, but it isn't easy.

Transitioning - Asparagus to strawberries

Never, never has the Phactor been so late at getting his kitchen garden planted. The weather gods have really been unfair, so thank goodness for perennials. So as asparagus season ends, the strawberries, inside their wire fortress, are ripening. The bed looked pretty dense, but then after weeding out the Indian strawberry, no task for any but the most observant, the bed was a bit more open. The berry crop will be OK, but not spectacular. The same will probably also be true for the blueberries and raspberries. And while everything else has languished, the weeds have been growing rapidly, so the behinder the gardener is.

Oh, no, they done it again, Fragaria disappears!

One of TPP's greatest annoyances is when new data results in changes to taxonomy, particularly the loss of long familiar generic names. This sometimes produces problems in terms of herbarium curation as well. In those cases where TPP has decided to refile genera, a marker-pointer is left so that when the old memory, or old field guide, leads someone to the old name, something points them to the correct place.
It was quite a surprise when TPP found our that the genus Fragaria, strawberries, was transferred to Potentilla! Apparently there are reasons aplenty, but that's not the point. This is most distressing because Fragaria, based on the same root as fragrance, is a very familiar genus, as is Potentilla, but TPP has different mental images of each; now they the same?  Well, this is why herbaria have curators.  Curiously, in a day an age when many largish genera are fragmenting (Did you know that N. America, including New England, no longer has any Asters?) Potentilla is getting larger and more diverse as it taxonomically sponges up these smaller genera. Hmm, so what about Duchesnea, Indian strawberry, the notorious lawn weed?  More questions to answer.  Sorry, a handy link has not presented itself, but the article is easily found by googling on Mabberly (the author) and the two generic names.  

On the weed war path

A late spring and a sudden transition to summer (drinking an iced coffee) has done nothing for my humor or my field work, but the weeds have done quite well, and so the Phactors have declared war upon weeds. Please notice that there was a formal declaration of war after we were invaded first and we only wage war to protect the homeland gardens. Here are the worst offenders: Indian strawberry, creeping charlie, oxalis, tillering grass, and the usual array of woody weeds: wild cherry, hackberry, sugar maple, redbud. In shady areas there can be 100-300 woody weed seedlings per square yard, and if you don't get them young, you end up with many less, but much harder weeds to remove (all hail the weed wrench!). The next step will be re-mulching lots of beds and paths. One good trick for gardens and paths is to put down either two layers (2 sheets) of newspaper or one layer of construction paper under the mulch. It decomposes but blocks weeds quite well for a season. This is particular important around shrubs and trees that do not like the fabric weed barriers, which are only useful under hard scape. Here's the real secret about weeding; get Mrs. Phactor going. She's a demon on weeds, sort of gets to a point where she just can't stand the sight of them any more, and shazam! Oops, caught taking a blog break!