Picking flowers

When Don and I returned from our second honeymoon, I noticed some stately flowers in bloom all over the place.

These are the flowers of the much-hated hound’s tongue (Cynoglossum officinale), a biennial invasive weed that was Eurasian in origin.

I had never heard of this plant before we moved to our current location, and at first was inclined to see the plant as stately and beautiful.

That was before it went to seed … and the seeds are loathsome burrs that cling to everything. I hate hound’s tongue with a passion. (Bonus complaint: It’s also toxic to livestock.)

So I went on a one-woman vendetta to eliminate this plant from our property. Unfortunately, like all good invasive weeds, it is simply everywhere.

Here’s a sample of last year’s seeds. The slightest jostle or brush, and they’re all over you.

So when we returned from our trip and I saw the hound’s tongue was in bloom, in irritation I snapped off the flowers of a plant in the yard.

And then I had an idea. It was impossible to get rid of all the plants, of course; but what if I just got rid of the flowers? No flowers, no seeds.

So I fetched a 30-gallon tub and a pair of gloves, waded out into the pastures, and started picking flowers.

Hound’s tongue tends to cluster. When I find one plant, I usually find a lot.

The flowers can form well down the stems, so I tried to go as low as possible.

Sometimes when yanking a flower, I yanked out the whole plant. Well shucky-darn.

Quite a taproom, no? I’ve dug out some plants that had taproots six inches across. It looked like some freaky weird root crop.

I filled up one of the tubs with flowers, and went back to get another tub. Altogether in an hour, I picked about one and a third tubs’ worth of flowers.

Over the next few days, as Don and I worked to get the property ready for cows, I yanked flowers whenever I saw them, probably enough to fill another tub at least.

There’s no possible way I got every flower, of course, but there’s some comfort in knowing I prevented several hundred thousand seeds from forming in the first place.

The battle continues … and probably will for as long as we live here.