The Urban Pantheist

Jill took me to meet an expert on invasive plants, who worked for the government of the States of Jersey. To my surprise, most of the invasive management done on the island involves native plants. In the past, livestock grazing kept certain plants from becoming dominant; there used to be a great many small cattle and sheep farms on the island. These days there are fewer, larger farms, and some native plants have no pressure on them any more, and can grow out of control.

The plant pictured above is gorse, a dense and prickly evergreen shrub. A landscape dominated by gorse is impassible.

( stand back, this post gets very very pretty, but it takes a couple dozen photos to get there )

Dodder grapples with knotweed.


The Riverway is a convenient way to get to Fenway Park for a lot of people. Sometimes, excited after a game, they push the trash can over (it's concreted down), and sometimes they roll it into the river. It doesn't endear me toward sports and sports fans.

cottonmanifesto has been encouraging the dodder which is parasitizing the Japanese knotweed along the Boston side of the Muddy River near our house.





It's doing quite well.

Photos by cottonmanifesto. Location: Olmsted Park, Boston.

Urban species #211: Dodder Cuscuta gronovii

Like Indian pipe, dodder is a plant without chlorophyll, a self-contradictory organism, but a quite successful one. Dodder--orange not green--parasitizes other plants. It sprouts alongside a potential host, and quickly twines around it, drawing nutrients until it no longer needs its own roots. With no leaves, and a ropy growth habit, dodder resembles spaghetti wrapped about the victim of its attention. It doesn't cause the death of its host, at least not until the dodder has produced its tiny waxy flowers, and then its seeds.

There are many species of dodder, including some that are host-specific, and others, that are generalists. They can be difficult to tell apart from one another, without an expert's training and a hand lens to examine the flowers. Dodder's presence in the city is dependent primarily on the presence of appropriate host plants.


Take that, purple loosestrife!