What is a Herbarium and what is it for: Jamestown's famous weed

Today for my blog post I figured I would do a traditional blog post (for this blog, anyway) along with a "Part 2" that talks a bit about what a Herbarium is and what use it has to science. I've been talking a bit in recent blogs about my personal herbarium that I'm making with my Garden List species, and I've also done a few for the Herbarium at Western of species I've found on campus that only recently appeared. I'm a creature of habit and tend to walk the same path to go to the same place; because I happen to pay attention to the "green stuff" covering the ground, I usually notice when something weird pops up that wasn't there before. I'll talk a bit about one of my favourite weedy plants, which also happens to be my very first plant collection in the herbarium! Sandra, who I featured in a sneaky picture in a previous blog post HERE, is the Herbarium Assistant and Acting Herbarium Curator until the position is filled and she found it hysterical how excited I was about collecting and pressing my very first Herbarium specimen. Since then...I'm hooked. Anyone want a plant collection pressed and dried? I'm your girl. Even better (because it's more fun), want a pressed and dried collection glued and mounted on herbarium paper? Let me know.

Here we go! My favourite weed. :)

Species name: Datura stramonium

Common name: Jimson weed, Jamestown weed, devil's cucumber, datura

Location: UWO Campus

Jimsonweed (or Jimson weed...same plant, along with about 20 other common names this plant has) is my favourite weedy species that we have here in North America. Not just because of it's many common names (HOW AWESOME is the name "devil's cucumber"?!), but because of the rich history it has in the making of the identity of North America today. Without this plant, I doubt anyone living in the United States or Canada would have the same kind of "national identity" that we have today. This plant is widely believed to have originated in North America, but was spread across the globe very early for its recreational uses and so that's difficult to confirm. Since I really like this plant, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say it's native to North America...because I can :) It can be weedy and spread quite quickly, so if you do decide to plant it you'll want to make sure you dead-head the flowers before the seed pods form (or, if you like the appearance of the seed pods make sure you pick them off the plant before they crack open and disperse their seeds).

Jimsonweed is in the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which is the same plant family that we find the edible food crops potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, as well as some ornamental species like henbane, mandrake, belladonna, and deadly nightshade (which, contrary to its common name is actually one of the plants that's least likely to kill you in this family, unless you're a small child or a beloved family pet). Like many of the species listed above, this plant is deadly poisonous. And when I say deadly, I mean deadly. Consuming the seeds from one seed pod would be enough to cause catastrophic organ failure in an adult human which would very quickly lead to death. Should you decide to only consume a few seeds, maybe 25 or so, it would also lead to catastrophic organ failure. This circumstance, however, results in a very slow, very painful death as your body slowly shuts down. Consuming only a small number of the seeds of this plant *may* result in a hallucinogenic trip, but it has equal likelihood in resulting in nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, and you wishing that the world would end right then and there (but you'll live). A few years ago there was a string of deaths of high school students in the United States, and it turns out that they all died from consuming Jimsonweed seeds. One of their friends had read on the internet that they're a free way of getting high, so they all ate them. Kids, don't believe everything you read on the internet! This plant is not worth it...trust me. Jimsonweed is fun to look at (how awesome are those seed pods?!), the flowers have an absolutely wonderful aroma, and they provide some nice fall colour to a garden. But don't, under any circumstances, eat it. Ever!

So why did I say above that this plant is probably the single most important plant species for the development of the identity of North America as it is today? Well...it comes from this plant's other major common name, the Jamestown weed. This name comes from Jamestown, Virginia, which was the site of Bacon's Rebellion. Long before Europeans sailed across the ocean blue to settle in what is now the United States, there were people already living there. In fact, there were a lot of people. About 14,000 people lived in and around Jamestown in the early 1600s when the first wave of settlers arrived. The local people were used to the types of harsh conditions to be expected in the winter months, but the Europeans were not so lucky. Many of them died, and it is widely speculated that the few that remained turned to cannibalism in order to survive. During the second wave of settlement, the "new Americans" were smarter: use the locals to build us shelters and show us how to gather food, and kill them if they refuse. There were many clashes between groups, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Nathanial Bacon decided he had had enough of the British fighting with the local people, and started an uprising. Governor William Berkeley had started teaming up with the local people to start building a nation. This angered some of the early settlers, since these same people were responsible for the deaths of many of their friends and family (it swings both ways, but I guess that wasn't the point). Bacon gathered people (estimates are between 300 and 500 people) to fight against Berkeley, eventually driving him out of Virginia and back to Britain. One of the major turning points in the rebellion was when British soldiers started flipping sides and fighting against their countrymen and their own Governor...all because they had been drugged. Bacon observed the local people preparing tea made out of a benign green plant (likely some kind of mint or other species which has a strong flavour, since Jimsonweed is reported to not taste very good) and sprinkled with 2 or 3 of the seeds of the Devil Plant. He prepared this same tea to offer to the freezing British soldiers, who promptly hallucinated for two weeks and became violently ill. While hallucinating, the soldiers were manipulated into amusing Bacon and his supporters, and once the drug's effects wore off they returned to normal, confused as to where the time had gone. When they were ostracized by their fellow soldiers for the actions performed while "under the influence," they decided to flip sides and help drive Governor Berkeley out of their new settlement. Berkeley retreated across the river, but with Bacon's death in 1676 a new leader of the Rebellion took over: John Ingram. Unfortunately, Ingram wasn't a very smart man. He decided to start a fight against the Pamunkey people, which were loyal supporters of Berkeley and even supplied him with warrior fighters. Between the British and the Pamunkey, the Rebellion was defeated and the rebels were driven out of the new settlement. The "good guys" had won. It has been speculated that if the British soldiers drugged with Jimsonweed hadn't flipped sides, Ingram never would have had enough supporters to wager a war against the Pamunkey people. Without this pivotal attack, Berkeley might have decided the war wasn't worth it and retreated back to Britain. What would this side of the world look like if this had of happened? It's impossible to speculate, but I bet it would be very different than what it is today. All thanks to a plant.

Jamestown, Virginia actually has an incredibly fascinating history in the early settlement of North America, and the independence of the United States. If you'd like to read more about the waves of settlement, the clashes that occurred, and the REAL story of Pocahontas (yes, that happened in Jamestown, too!) you can read more on the Wikipedia page HERE.

This plant isn't all bad. The active ingredients leading to hallucinations (and ultimately death) are alkaloids called atropine and scopolamine. Some of you might recognize these two compounds, as atropine is one of the most successful drug compounds used in treating severe asthma. In large amounts, atropine causes the paralysis of the lung tissue and the dilation of the bronchioles which increases air flow. In smaller amounts the paralysis occurs to a much smaller extent allowing the patient to still be able to breathe, but dilates the bronchioles to increase air flow. Scopolamine is also a very important drug in modern medicine; it's used to treat symptoms of Parkinson's disease and is one of the most effective anti-tremor medications (in small concentrations, of course!). Datura itself (the combination of these two alkaloids) is used to treat morphine addiction. Because of the effects on the body that it has, there are certain conditions that it will aggravate like glaucoma or difficulty urinating. Glaucoma is caused by an increase in pressure of the fluid of the eye, which can be aggravated by atropine (which causes the dilation of blood vessels, which would increase blood flow to the eye and increase the pressure even more). One of the main effects of both atropine and scopolamine is the inhibition of the parasympathetic system, which is responsible for the regulation of urination. If you're already having trouble urinating, inhibiting this further could be disastrous. But, again, this plant WILL KILL YOU if you try to make some kind of medicinal concoction on your own. Prescribed drugs have these compounds in very small, controlled amounts. The plant does what it pleases. Don't be stupid.

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Now that you know why this plant is just so awesome, I figured I would talk a bit about this "Herbarium thing": what it is, what it's used for, why they're important, and what is stored in them.

A herbarium is like a library, but for dried plant material. When you walk into a herbarium (which is climate-controlled to prevent insect infestation, so usually kept around 15 C) the first thing that you'll notice are rows upon rows of cabinets. The cabinets contain stacks of sheets of card stock, on which is glued (or sewn, if you've got a really old collection) a plant collection. This collection is identified by species name, a location of where the collection was made (which now includes coordinates), any important information to go along with the collection, who made the collection, and a collection number (often called an accession number). Herbarium specimens are very similar to books: they have titles, authors, years of publication, and a brief description (like liner notes) of what can be found on the page. These specimens are then preserved for all of eternity, and databased so they can be accessed by researchers from other institutions. Some herbaria have thousands of collections (the Western Herbarium has about 60,000 collections), while others like the New York Botanical Gardens or the Paris Natural History Museum have millions of collections (about 10 million at NYBG, 8-9 million in Paris). Herbarium collections are invaluable to science since they show a snapshot of the plants living in an area in any given period of time. The herbarium collections at Western are "young" compared to other institutions since our oldest specimen is from the late 1800s. For my research, the oldest herbarium specimen I received on loan was from 1799, and many were from the 1820s and 1830s. There are some collections in Kew and in Paris from the 1500s! Herbarium specimens have been used in a wide variety of different types of biological studies, from studies about taxonomy (where you study old and new collections of species to look for new species "lost" in herbarium collections or to help you determine whether what you collected is a new species or not) to conservation biology. Herbarium specimens are actually becoming more and more crucial in conservation and restoration biology as habitats are becoming more and more degraded. What plant species used to be present in a given area, compared to what is there today? Can species that used to be present even be located in the same area now? Has the composition of which species are present completely changed? What does this mean? There have even been cases of determining that a plant species is now extinct in the wild based on herbarium collections. The species was collected from an area, described, and hasn't been seen since.

So how do we make a herbarium collection? I figured it was only fitting that my very first plant collection ever to be stored in a herbarium should be my favourite plant: Jimsonweed. When I found the plant growing on campus I carefully pulled it out of the ground to get the root ball intact, knocked off all of the extra dirt, and brought it in to Sandra in the herbarium for pressing. Here's what the plant looks like, in front of a standard piece of herbarium paper (11.5" x 16.5") for scale: 

Now, it should be obvious even to someone who's never made a herbarium collection before that this isn't going to work. Half the plant is missing; it's about 2 times bigger than the size of the paper. So what to do? Well...cut it. All of this preparation of a specimen needs to be done before it's dried, or else the dried plant will just shatter when you try to manipulate it later. I cut the bottom off right at the edge of the paper, and the bottom half became "sheet 2 of 2" for this collection. Next, the collection needs to go between pieces of newspaper and pressed out flat in a herbarium press, which then goes in the dryer to dry the specimen as much as possible (which can take up to a month, depending on how juicy the plant material is!). When a collection is pressed, maintaining the integrity of the plant is very important, because if someone wants to see your collection in 60 years they have to be able to determine what it even is. Showing the upper side and the lower side of leaves is important, but never the same leaf. Folding leaves when drying makes them very fragile and should be avoided when possible. The flowers of the plant, if present, should be kept as visible as possible and all other plant material should be pulled away. The seed pods, if present, should remain on the plant and should also be easily visible. Once all of the manipulation is done, put the newspaper-plant-sandwich into the press, the press into the drying oven, and forget about it for at least a week.

Once the press comes out of the oven, the sheets of newspaper can carefully be removed and opened. Sometimes tweezers can help to carefully pick the newspaper off of the plant material, since sometimes plants "juice" when they're squeezed into a tight location like the herbarium press. As long as the collection is dry, it's ready to be mounted on herbarium paper.

Grab yourself some 11.5" x 16.5" rag-bond acid-free paper and some acid-free glue. Contrary to what you might think, the less glue the better (learned that one the hard way once...). Decide which side is "up" and which side is "down" of your collection, and dab some glue in important places on the side that will be down. Important places would be at major intersections on the stem where pieces could break in two, along leaf petioles, or where the flower attaches to the stem. One thing you DON'T want to do is glue the entire flower to the paper, or the entire leaf. When someone else looks at your specimens they like to be able to see the underside of all of these things, so leave some space where they could carefully be pulled up off the paper to inspect the underside. When all of that is done, the specimen needs to be weighted down onto the paper. Herbarium presses might be able to squish things pretty well, but some plants are great resistors to the squishing. No matter what you do, you just can't get them quite flat enough. Common washers and nuts can be used to weigh the plant material into the glue dabs until the glue dries enough that the plant can't escape it. Once it's all glued and weighted down, it looks like this:

Let the glue dry, and while you're waiting you can make yourself a label! The label needs to be laser-printed using acid-free ink on acid-free paper that is BRIGHT white (even brighter than normal printer paper) and needs to be formatted according to the herbarium that you're depositing your specimen into. This is what our herbarium labels look like, and all of the information that we put onto them:

(my collection is #53,018 in the herbarium! Woo!)

Now it's time to glue the label onto the herbarium paper. They always go in the bottom right corner, so hopefully you saved space for it there (again, learned this the hard way once, too...). Glue it on with acid-free, extra-tacky label glue (which, of course, is different than specimen glue...). Make sure the glue doesn't leak out the edges! If it does, wipe it off right away. We want these looking pretty:

And now you can do any finishing touches! You can see that there are four of the big nuts weighing something down above the label on the sheet on the left. When the seed pods of Jimsonweed are dried, they split open to release the seeds. We want to keep these! Any plant material that falls off of a pressed herbarium specimen is still important material. These go into a little paper envelope, which is glued directly above the label of the specimen (or on page 1 of 2, if there is more than 1 sheet that goes with a single collection).

Now you're done! I was so proud of this silly specimen. It's just a dried plant glued onto paper, but it was my first dried plant glued onto paper! And hopefully it will be useful to someone some day. Now I've got nearly 90 others courtesy of my Garden List and trust me...botanical craft time never gets old :)

Sandra's Garden: This hawkweed has spots!

I've been sitting on this blog post for a couple of days because I've been really unsure of the correct ID for this species. I was pretty sure I had it once...but then changed my mind. Then I was pretty sure I had ID'd it correctly again...but then changed my mind again! Now I've got it. I think. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to point it out in the comments section and lead me to a more appropriate name. This is one of the reasons why I hate trying to ID "dandelion-like flowers"--they're just so gosh darn hard to get the right name if you don't have a microscope and a full identification key handy!

Species name: Hieracium maculatum

Common name: spotted hawkweed

Location: Sandra's garden

This species of hawkweed, incredibly common throughout Europe where it is native, is also now becoming more and more common in Canada. Here it's considered a weed since it thrives in highly disturbed areas which include that garden you just dug up to plant new flowers, or the area around where you just cut down the tree and don't know what to replace it with. In Sandra's case it's growing right beside her driveway (made out of gravel, not asphalt), but it's also serving as a great example of what the definition of a "weed" is: a plant that's growing somewhere where we don't want it. Sandra's got a great philosophy towards gardening: "if I like the plant, then it gets to grow." While most of us would have ripped this plant out a long time ago because it looks far too much like a dandelion for our liking, Sandra lets it thrive behind a rock that serves as a buffer between the driveway and the mulched garden. Enjoy your time while it lasts, little plant!

Hawkweeds are some of the most successful plants in disturbed areas because of the way they reproduce: they make asexual seeds. This phenomenon is incredibly unusual overall in the plant kingdom, and when a plant decides to reproduce asexually (which in itself is actually quite common) or clonally it rarely chooses to do so via seed production. Rhizomes, tillers, offsets or offshoots, suckers, foliar embryos, splitting, layering--all of these are common phenomena displayed in various plant species (sometimes even in groups as large as families) that rarely results in a seed-like structure being produced. In fact, plants that reproduce asexually prefer to do this over reproducing sexually but yet retain the ability to do so if growth conditions change. Reproducing asexually is much faster than producing seeds, and seed production is very energetically taxing on the plant (sometimes even killing the plant afterwards!). On top of that, you never quite know what kind of gene combination you're going to end up with since you shuffle all of your genes and they are randomly distributed (along with your mate's genes) into the seeds; each seed still gets one copy of each gene (or two, or four, depending on the plant...) from each parent, but each parent can have two different copies. Which one your offspring gets (you might have two good copies, one good and one bad copy, or two bad copies) is luck of the draw. Why would you risk giving your offspring a bad copy of a gene when you can just pass on all of your genetic material, exactly as it is, to your offspring so they can thrive like you do in the environment you're in? Seems like a no-brainer. But when the environmental conditions change and you are challenged as a plant in your environment, you might decide it would be best for you to roll the dice and take a chance at shuffling your genes so your offspring have a better chance in this new environment. Thus, seed production. But ASEXUAL SEEDS? This just seems crazy.

And for some plants, deciding whether to produce asexually or sexually is way too much work, and since your gene combination works for you it should also work perfectly well for your offspring, aka your clones. Almost the entire genus of Hieracium species reproduce exclusively via asexual seeds that are dispersed in the same way that dandelion seeds are in the wind; this process is called apomixis. This leads to the debate of "what is a species?" which is currently getting quite heated between experts that study this plant in Europe and in the United States. Some say that each clone should be considered a different species, since if you don't reproduce sexually it's impossible to tell who is your closest relative (a perfectly valid argument; one that has been raised in many other plant, animal and fungal species). That would give us about 10,000 species of Hieracium. Others argue that species should be defined based on broad morphological differences, which would give us about 800 species of Hieracium. Just a little difference! No matter which way you choose to define species, I think it's safe to say that there's a lot of them. If you tried counting to 800, it would take you a while; that's my definition of "a lot." There are a lot of species of Hieracium. There. Problem solved!

So what are hawkweed species good for? Absolutely nothing (sorry for just getting that song stuck in your head)! Actually, the plants themselves and the seeds are important food sources for a lot of animals, but one moth in particular: the large yellow underwing moth. This insect species is a great example of an insect that is expanding its range in response to warmer, shorter winters. Prior to the mid-1980s it was found exclusively in Europe and the Middle East, but after its introduction to Nova Scotia by accident in 1985 it has spread all the way to California and Alaska in 20 short years. Prior to that it had never been found further north than the southern edges of Russia! A pretty incredibly feat for a bug.

A monster looms in the bluebells...

Species name: Taraxacum officinale

Common name: dandelion

Location: Ontario

Feeling like you have deja vu? That might be because I've already blogged about dandelions before, but they were regular ordinary dandelions. This one is special! If you'd like to read my last blog about dandelions and learn a whole bunch of cool stuff about dandelions in general, you can do so HERE.

Dandelions are most likely native to Eurasia, but there's a significant debate about their origins. There have even been a few people to suggest that the true dandelion that carries this species name is only found in North America, and that there's a separate species in Europe. The Europeans always feel they have to be special... :) Regardless of the true species name, almost all dandelions are created equal: they flower in the spring when you're just trying to get your grass looking good again, most people hate them, they have taproots that are nearly impossible to get out of the ground unless you're weeding after a heavy downpour and the ground is wet (if you've never weeded after it has rained, give it a try. You'll thank me later. You're welcome), they have bright yellow flowers that turn into fluffy seed heads, and no matter what kind of biological warfare you use on them the always come back. You know, typical boring (some might say ugly, but I rather like them) dandelions.

Except this one!

Instead of just talking about why dandelions are cool, I wanted to talk about why THIS dandelion is cool. You can see right away from the top image, highlighted in the bottom two images, that the flower head of this particular plant doesn't look like a typical dandelion plant. This phenomenon is called "fasciation", and so this dandelion plant is fasciated. This means that all of the flower heads that would have developed into their own flower under normal conditions have, for some reason, fused together and created a mutant giant flower head (caused by the fusion of many separate meristems at the end of the inflorescence stalks). This, to me, is one of the most fascinating phenomena of the plant world, and has been documented in over 100 species of plants. The best part? No one has any idea why this happens in any given plant. There are lots of ideas of why this might happen in general: exposure to radiation, attack of a virus, exposure to low doses of specific chemicals (like 2,4-D, or Roundup, for example), mechanical disturbance, insect damage, or genetic mutations. But could anyone tell you why THIS PLANT became fasciated? As of our current knowledge, no. You could definitely speculate and come up with the most likely scenario but you would never be 100% sure (and there are likely other reasons why this happens that are currently undocumented). Normally this phenomenon is incredibly rare in the plant world, and to see it would be a real treat...except dandelions. Apparently dandelions do this all the time! Silly plants. The speculation here is that in this plant species it is more than likely pre-determined by genetic mutations that can be passed on through the seeds, but also exposure to common pesticides like 2,4-D also play a role (and dandelions are always on the end of chemical attacks, it seems!). Unfortunately, someone ripped this plant out of the ground (and by someone, I mean the people that do grounds maintenance on campus) before it had a chance to finish flowering and turn to seed. I would have loved to continue taking pictures of the flower development and collect some seeds to see if I could grow a new fasciated dandelion! Yes, I know what's coming. "You know you're a nerd when..." :) Don't worry, Mom and Dad. I would have done it in the greenhouses at school!

Have you ever seen a fasciated plant? Now that I know it exists, I saw the remains of a fasciated tulip growing in a bed on campus. Fascinating fasciation!

EDIT: I guess I should mention that this phenomenon isn't just restricted to the plant world; it also happens in fungi. Next time you're in the grocery store and have some time to kill, go pick through the bin of shiitake mushrooms. I bet you'll find a mushroom with a single squashed-looking stalk with two caps on the top. Fasciated shiitakes are quite common; I guess that makes the shiitake the dandelion of the fungus world!

Breathe in, breathe out...

Species name: Pulmonaria officinalis

Common name: lungwort, Our Lady's Milk Drops

Location: Ontario

Lungwort is probably the most common wildflower across all of mainland Europe, where it is native. It exists in every country except for Norway, has been naturalized in Britain, and has spread as far east as Russia and as far south as Iran. It's one successful little plant! Aside from being a wildflower native to Europe, it is also a very common European garden plant which is why it is now found in North America; it was introduced here in the 1700s by European settlers to decorate their gardens and has thrived here ever since. This plant isn't quite successful enough in North America to be considered invasive since it reproduces very, very slowly from seed. Once established, it spreads like a weed through underground rhizomes. We have quite a patch of it growing in our garden. Sure, the flowers are nice and the flower early in the spring when everything else still looks dead, but too much of it is not a good thing. Plus, it's a non-native!

Lungwort is a great example of a principle called the "Doctrine of Signatures". This principle states that if a plant looks like part of the body, it can be used to treat that part of the body. This idea might seem a little crazy (which it is), but this explains where we get a lot of the common names of plants, and even some Latin names: "Pulmonaria" means lungs, and the Latin epithet "officinalis" (or any derivative of that word) means medicine. Any time you see a Latin name of a plant with that epithet, you know it was once used as a medicinal plant (and sometimes still is).

The flowers of lungwort are a great example of "magic" that can happen inside a plant when you're not paying attention. When the flowers first open they are pink, sometimes even almost red. This is because of an anthocyanin-based pigment found in the flowers that reacts to a very low pH by producing a colour that our eyes interpret as pink. As the flower matures, the plant gradually shifts the pH of the flower petals to be significantly more alkaline, sometimes shifting the pH as much as 5-6 points on the pH scale. This causes the anthocyanin pigments to change configuration, and instead of producing a colour that we interpret as pink, our eyes see it as blue. This change in flower colour is similar, yet different to the change in flower colour that can be observed in hydrangeas (which you can read all about HERE). Hydrangeas react to the pH of the soil, which in turn affects the colour of the flowers (as opposed to this flower colour change being plant-directed). The other difference between hydrangea flower colour changes and the changes observed in lungwort is that lungwort is more a direct reflection of the way we think of colour change according to pH: blue means basic, red means acidic. In hydrangea flowers, the colour indicates the opposite (very brightly-coloured blue flowers mean a very acidic soil and bright pink or red flowers mean a strongly basic soil).

So what kind of medicinal uses does this plant actually have? Well, it's currently used as an herbal medicine to treat asthma. This treatment is surprisingly successful; extracts from the plant are now being looked at as an alternative medication to asthma inhalers. Since people with very severe asthma start to notice a "desensitization" reaction occurring with the most commonly prescribed asthma medications, it would be a welcome addition to the market!

The afternoon primrose

Species name: Primula sp. (a garden hybrid of unknown origin)

Common name: primrose

Location: Ontario

Primroses are another great example of why I hate common names. The evening primrose (profiled in a blog post that you can read HERE), is completely unrelated to species in the genus Primula, also called primroses. Sure, they look a little similar (perhaps not the evening primrose compared to this garden hybrid, but some other Primula species), but that's about it. Species of primrose in this genus are native to a wide variety of locations on almost every continent (Australia seems to be excluded from the list) but with the vast majority of the species in the genus native to the Himalayas. Since this garden hybrid (which is actually quite commonly grown) has an unknown parentage, meaning the two or more species that were hybridized to create this cultivar, so I decided to play it safe and call it a non-native species.

I think this species illustrates the concept of a weed perfectly. There is no real definition of a "plant weed," nor are there truly good examples of weed species at least in the common sense of the word. A weed is simply a plant that is growing in a place that we don't want it growing. A plant that is purposefully planted in one garden might be their next-door neighbour's weed. You can probably guess that most weeds are non-native species, only because those are the plants that are most likely to out-compete their neighbours since there are no pathogens to keep their populations in check. This primrose is a great example of a weed in our garden. I have no idea who planted it in the neighbourhood, but one spring it all of a sudden showed up. I ripped it out, but not until after it had gone to seed so now it comes back every year. I wish if it was going to grow it would do it more quickly and make a nice little patch of it that we could put a fence around to keep it contained, but it seems to like being the size that it is (about 10 cm x 10 cm and 4-5 cm tall). I'll refrain from pulling it out this year and see what happens.

I don't think it should come as a surprise to any of my faithful blog readers that I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to classification of species. This is probably because of the results I've found in my own work: apparently we're not very good at defining species of fungi at all, and many things that we thought were "species" are only morphological variants. Even more numerous is the trend the other way: many things that we thought were morphological variants are actually species. It's amazing what happens when you start to sequence a group's DNA and analyze the relationships between species! The genus Primula is a great example of this. There are over 500 species in the genus, some of which are so drastically different morphology-wise (and even habitat-wise, which should tell you something about their evolutionary relationships...) that I find it incredibly hard to believe they're in the same genus. With a more thorough investigation of these 500 species and a comprehensive analysis of the group's evolutionary relationships, it wouldn't surprise me if Primula ended up being divided into 25 or more separate genera. Might even be a fun post-doctoral fellowship... :)

Internationally primrose species have been used as medicinal plants for centuries. In fact, they have so many uses that they just might be a miracle plant should all of these uses prove to be effective in clinical trials. The roots of the plants are prepared in either a salve or a tea to treat any kind of cough (pneumonia, bronchitis, common cold, emphysema, etc.), the leaves are used in a tea to treat any kind of head-related ailment (dizziness, headache, stroke, sleeplessness, paralysis, etc.) and the flowers as a vitamin supplement (rumoured to contain high amounts of vitamin A and vitamin C) as well as any kind of digestive-related problems (diuretic, spasmolytic, and sedative). That's a whole bunch of uses for one tiny plant! I find it hard to believe that it could be effective against everything that might ever ail you, but you never know. With a species diversity in the genus argued to be at 500 species, if each one had a single use that's a whole lot of uses! It's also a good example of a general rule in botany and "plant gathering as agriculture": don't ever eat anything or use something as a medicinal plant if you're not absolutely sure about the intended use. If you use the wrong primrose, your headache might turn into a dizziness spell or convulsions!

New England's asters aren't nearly as tasty as their clam chowder

Species name: Symphyotrichum novae-angliae (formerly in the genus Aster)

Common name: New England Aster

Location: Ontario

This species of aster (a common name as well as a Latin name!) is native to just about all areas of North America east of the Rocky Mountains, except in Canada's far north where it is too cold for it to grow. This species, while incredibly common in field sites, has becoming increasingly popular as a garden plant because of its late blooming time (sometimes still having brilliant purple flowers when the first major snowfall hits in November) and easy of care. You literally don't have to do anything to this plant to get it to flower vigorously every year. That's my kind of garden plant! Unfortunately, like any aster that prefers disturbed areas, with no basic pruning maintenance (and digging out new shoots that you don't want) this plant gets a bit out of control (as evidenced by the top photograph). You could also just plant a bunch of other native wildflowers beside each other in close proximity, and let them hold each other up!

Like many other "roadside weeds" in North America, this species was introduced to Europe more than three centuries ago as an ornamental plant. It seems to do much worse there than it does here, which is somewhat unusual for a garden plant. Usually when you introduce a weedy species from a natural habitat into a foreign one, it only gets worse. Thankfully, this plant missed that memo (or forgot to learn how to read somewhere along the way). The Australians haven't been so lucky, since this species tends to get away in gardens there.

Other than the ornamental value (there have been 70 different cultivars created to date, but only 50 of them are used in any great extent commercially), there is no known economic benefit of this plant. I'm sure somewhere along the line it was used as a medicinal plant many centuries ago, but that use has since been lost or forgotten. It is also not known to be edible.

A speedy way to wellness

Species name: Veronica longiflora

Common name: long-leaved speedwell

Location: Ontario

This plant is a "nearly native" wildflower common in roadside ditches and disturbed open fields. Unfortunately, it is a poor competitor in southwestern Ontario so is rarely found in large abundance in natural habitats for long since it is out-competed by native and non-native goldenrods, thistles, and other asters like daisies (likely the non-native ones), black-eyed susans, and Queen Anne's lace. This plant is very attractive to bees and other insects, and are an important food source in Canada for the Grizzled Skipper, a butterfly that actually builds itself a shelter when still a caterpillar to use at night and when it's not feeding. Pretty smart caterpillar!

Like all good things in botanical nomenclature, the genus Veronica is being reanalyzed using DNA sequencing to determine relatedness between species. The morphological variation between species in the genus is quite drastic, as are the habitats of each species, and geographic location. Since there seem to be at least two distinct groups, one having its origins in North America and the other having its origins in Australasia, it wouldn't surprise me if genetically those were two distinct genera as well. It's actually estimated that the 500 or so species of Veronica might actually fit into as many as 7 other genera once analysis is complete.

Since so many people consider this plant species a "weed" (I personally think it's actually quite attractive...), there is one good thing about this plant existing in urban areas. The entire plant is edible! The leaves reportedly taste a lot like watercress, so a peppery spinach. The flowers are also edible, but just make sure there aren't any bugs hiding in them or else you might have a nasty surprise when you bite into your salad. The roots and leaves when dried have commonly been used in traditional North American medicine in a tea that is consumed to relieve chest congestion. If you are going to attempt to eat this plant, just make sure you're not confusing it with another common species that grows in the same type of environment, skullcap. Skullcap is in the mint family and has square stems, speedwell is in the snapdragon family and has round stems. As with all wild plants, if you aren't 100% sure of the identification of the plant, don't eat it!

The bane of fleas probably is not this plant

Species name: Erigeron strigosus

Common name: Plains fleabane, prairie fleabane

Location: Ontario

This plant is native to eastern North America, although it has naturalized itself to most disturbed prairie-type habitats across temperate North America. In fact, the genus Erigeron is most diverse in North America, with almost 175 species occurring here (or having evolved here). This species does well in moderately dry soils that can be periodically wet, and would typically be considered a "weed" since it likes to grow where you least want it. I wouldn't consider it invasive; it has a boom-and-bust style of population growth, but is a poor competitor for resources where there are other plants that occupy the same niche. It would likely be out-competed by other native species if challenged.

The common name for this plant comes from the idea that the dried plant repels fleas...I somehow doubt that's an effective plan for keeping fleas off your beloved pet. Erigeron as a group of plants are vitally important to some Lepidopteran (moths and butterflies) larvae, where some species of larvae must feed on one and only one species of Erigeron. Despite these plants not necessarily being the most attractive to the average gardener, a good diversity of native (to your area) Erigeron species is vital to a good butterfly garden!