Somerville Biodiversity Walk

[urbpan]

Yesterday's walk was fun. The focus of the organizers was invasive plants--a topic I'm honestly a little weary of. But I did learn some new things, even though it's material I deal with almost daily at work. It was good to be with people whose main obsession was plants, and knew what they were talking about. Of the many weeds in the city, only a handful are considered invasives. Garlic Mustard, Black Swallowort, Japanese Knotweed, and of course my favorite urban tree Ailanthus altissima were the most reviled invasives. That leaves both kinds of plantain, dandelion, pineapple weed, burdock, lamb's quarters and the many other familiar sidewalk-splitters safe. The walk leader had a strange hatred for poke--apparently it's contains carcinogenic agents (then don't mess with it, thinks I).

The most useful information for me was the identity of that tall indistinct very common weed (heart leaf aser) and the really tall one (evening primrose). We also found two specimens of a non-weed amongst the weeds: forget-me-not.

Comments

Poke, poke, poke!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to do more investigation on this carcenogenic poke business. Especially, since I'm intentionally cultivating it in my back yard. The woman from the New England Wildflower Society, who made this claim, didn't offer much information about where the problem lay. But she did say that you should always wash your hands after handling it.

Oh, and I apparently missed the identification of the evening primrose. That sounds like a nice one to encourage in my little backyard wilderness habitat. I'll have to look that one up, too.

-Turtle

Don't eat the poke.

[(Anonymous)]

All I could find out about pokeweed was a lot of references to a protein called a "lectin", which is a "mitogen", which apparently is "An agent that stimulates mitosis and lymphocyte transformation". I'm not sure if I should be terrified or intregued. I believe that this essentially means that the plant protein helps cancer grow, but doesn't in fact CAUSE it.

Anyway, I found no information on how to safely handle the plant other than a vague recommendation not to eat it. However, the root, leaves, and berries have been used and eaten for centuries, or longer, so it can't be all that big of a deal, and the warnings I found were pretty mild. Cooking it seems to remove much of the toxic effects of the plant, similar to "deadly nightshade" plants like potatoes.

But I'm going to stay on the safe side, and just use the berries to make pretty purple ink, or a (non-washable) fabric dye, I think.

-Turtle