Horrendous Bulb Weed with 3 Leaves and a Spike

Discussion in 'Plant ID' started by Yardening, Apr 22, 2012.

  1. Yardening

    Yardening New Seed

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    [​IMG]
    Leaves ( photo / image / picture from Yardening's Garden )





    [​IMG]
    Weed "Flower" ( photo / image / picture from Yardening's Garden )





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    Weed Bulb ( photo / image / picture from Yardening's Garden )


    This thing is coming over to my yard from the neighbor's. It is actually spreading in a patch of ivy and pachysandra of mine - currently isolated to that single bed, thank goodness. It is pretty close to bishop's weed in terms of pure evil. It comes up through thick mulch, it spreads by bulb, seed, and some kind of downward spike off of the stem (I think) and it breaks off extremely easily at the soil line, forcing you to dig out the bulb. It's like a super-onion. It does not smell like an onion.

    What is this thing? My neighbor (on the other side a few doors down) was familiar with it, but didn't know the name. She said if I can't stop it, she's selling her house :) I generally try to avoid chemicals, but this thing deserves something toxic if I can kill it without hurting the ivy and pachysandra...
     
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  3. Palustris

    Palustris Young Pine

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    I can tell you the family, it is an Arisaema of some sort, if that helps.
     
  4. eileen

    eileen Resident Taxonomist Staff Member Moderator Plants Contributor

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    You might recognisee it's more common name - Jack in the pulpit.
     
  5. Yardening

    Yardening New Seed

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    Very helpful! Thanks! Could this be "crowdipper"? That's Pinellia ternata. Googling seems to show pictures that are quite similar, and some links indicating that our local arboretum (Morris) has been struggling with this plant.

    Seems to be just as bad as I feared. Eradication advice seems to indicate 100 man-hours per acre for manual eradication, and 5 years of herbicide application for chemical eradication! There is no hope for the ivy and pachysandra, which in the long term was going to be pulled out anyway.

    Fortunately, my neighbor's yard is separated from mine by my driveway in the front, and in the back my neighbor's yard is infested with bishop's weed - which until now I thought was the world's worst plant. But now I'm thanking the bishop's weed for keeping this thing at bay. Bishop's weed can be held back with a deep border (with no cracks!) and the occasional hit with roundup.

    Neighbors house is for sale now... hopefully I get a gardener :) Right now they use a yard service.
     



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  6. Cayuga Morning

    Cayuga Morning Strong Ash Plants Contributor

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    Yardening--Wow! A weed that can hold its own with pachysandra! You are right, it must be some humdinger of a weed. It does look like some kind of Arisaema, like a skinny Jack in the Pulpit. Is Pinellia ternata an arisaema?
     
  7. Yardening

    Yardening New Seed

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    Yeah, the magic Google term to find it was "arisaema weed" and the hint from eileen about the related plant "Jack in the pulpit". That led to forum discussions about the invasiveness of some varieties, and when I saw mention of Morris Arboretum, I knew we had it nailed because that is right around the corner (I got married there).

    Kingdom: Plantae
    Order: Alismatales
    Family: Araceae
    Subfamily: Aroideae
    Tribe: Arisaemateae
    Genus: Pinellia
    Species: P. ternata
     
  8. Cayuga Morning

    Cayuga Morning Strong Ash Plants Contributor

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    Yardening--Do you have a plan of attack? Guerilla warfare?
     
  9. Yardening

    Yardening New Seed

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    LOL, well it has altered my original plans, that is for sure.

    It's a little "island" bed under a hemlock. We bought the house 2 years ago, and it came filled with a combination of English Ivy and pachysandra, with a bunch of weeds and some steadily gaining wintercreeper thrown in for good measure. I have been pulling the weeds and I detest the wintercreeper so that came out as well.

    My original plan was to give the pachysandra to my neighbor and just pull out the English ivy, or possibly transplant it to my property's border with a field... it would be nicer than the wild parsnips, wintercreeper, bishops weed, and native honeysuckle that I'm constantly fighting now. English ivy can get out of hand, but it seems to keep poison ivy at bay better than the native honeysuckle.

    In the shady side I was going to plant hostas, astilbe, and whatever else seemed in need of a splitting :) On the sunny side I hadn't decided - I already stuck a butterfly bush cutting over there and will just go from there. But I wasn't going to pull that out until next year.

    Now the going is much slower... my neighbor wants nothing from my yard now that he's seen the devil crowdipper weed. So I'm sifting all the soil of the crowdipper corms and transplanting the pachysandra and ivy to my field border. If I see even a single crowdipper come up from one of my transplanted plants, I'll go nuclear on it - just throw landscaping fabric or an old t-shirt and mulch on the whole spot... I don't honestly care about the field border all that much... I just want to keep it hacked down so the vines don't kill all the trees. My neighbors on either side don't do anything at all back there, so it's a big fight :)

    I'm still trying to decide if I'm brave enough to plant the front bed or cover it for a year to kill anything that might be living in the soil :)
     
  10. Palustris

    Palustris Young Pine

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    Beat me to it. I was coming back to say Pinellia which while not an Arisaema is an aroid, so in the same area. There are actually only 3 common Arisaema in America, A. triphyllum, A. dracontium and one I cannot spell beginning with q. My book showed that none of them were correct so I went looking elsewhere and came to the same conclusion as you. Sounds rather nasty.
     
  11. CRenee

    CRenee New Seed

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    horrendous bulb

    It's Pinellia ternata, a nasty invasive weed.
     
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  12. Cayuga Morning

    Cayuga Morning Strong Ash Plants Contributor

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    So how goes the battle, Yardening?
     
  13. Droopy

    Droopy Slug Slaughterer Plants Contributor

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    It's a cute, little thing. Sorry to hear that it's so invasive. :( Good luck with getting rid of it.
     
  14. Yardening

    Yardening New Seed

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    Still fighting the good fight. I manually pulled out any shoots and hit it with Roundup whenever there was a clear shot. It kept coming, but smaller and smaller. This March, I tore up the remainder of the Pachysandra and English Ivy and put down newspaper and mulch. I'm hoping that chokes it out, but I'm mentally prepared to do my daily hand-pulling ritual until it is all dead. If this gets into my yard proper I'll sell the house :)
     
  15. big blue

    big blue New Seed

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    Yardening, I saw this thread some time last year and felt your pain. I still do. I'm fighting the good fight, too.

    I live in Philly also and this stuff showed it's head a couple years ago in my garden. I can't tell you how many of these d*** bulbs I have dug out of the ground.

    I'm spending the day sifting thru dirt, too, and thought I'd join to let you know you are not alone on your journey. :(

    I keep telling myself I can win the battle.
     
  16. Yardening

    Yardening New Seed

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    So now I'm almost two-months away from when I mulched and put down paper, and the little buggers are back. But this year, they are not as healthy. They aren't putting up any flowers - and to grow up through the paper they really had to twist and turn. Whenever one pokes up through the mulch, I nuke it with Roundup. I've been doing that weekly. They don't seem to die immediately from roundup, but they certainly do look weaker and more pale. I'm hoping that in a few weeks I'll be able to say "dead". I'm not pulling them this year - I want to try to let the Roundup kill them. I'm not really a fan of herbicide, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Besides, I'm eating food that's been treated with it, so how bad can it be? :)

    Failing that, the bed will get the "nuclear option": thick plastic contractor bags held down by cinder blocks until EVERYTHING dies :) My wife will just love that look in the front of the house...
     
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