Category Archives: Plants

Mutant Pigweed vs. Glysophate-Resistant Corn, Soybeans, and Cotton

It’s a funny thing about monocultures. They’re highly vulnerable to anything that affects that particular variety. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho writes:
The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.

The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.

Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.

Here’s the good news: Continue reading →

Janisse Ray in Moultrie, 26 Jan 2010

Janisse Ray spoke and read from her books in Moultrie last night. The place was packed with a wide variety of people:

Packed, many ages

Here’s her opening poem: Continue reading →

Floating Bottom

In the dead of winter, it’s amusing to look back a few months to fall flowers:

Red and yellow

These yellow and white flowers are growing on floating bottom in the middle of a pond. Looks like a lush prairie:

PB010502

But if you step on it, you will sink through into water. Here’s what you find at the edge of the floating bottom:

Bladderwort?

I think that’s bladderwort, which is a carnivorous plant that eats small insects.

And for another color:

Red2

Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, 1 Nov 2009, Lowndes County, Georgia. More pictures in the flickr set.

Mistletoe

You know it’s Yule season when you see the mistletoe.

Mistletoe

Clumps Actually, it’s evergreen, so you can see it all year if you want to; we just go looking for it around the winter solstice.

Phoradendron leucarpum (aka Phoradendron serotinum) is the common American mistletoe, one of 1300 species of mistletoe worldwide. It’s poisonous, and like many poisonous plants, had traditional medicinal uses. Nowadays it’s mainly noted as a forestry pest because it’s a parasite that takes resources from its host tree, although it is being studied for various pharmacological uses.

And a certain well-known friendly use.

It ranges from New Mexico to New York by way of Florida. And Georgia. Curiously, the USDA Plants Profile shows none in Lowndes County, Georgia.

Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, 13 Dec 2009, Lowndes County, Georgia.