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Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Oxalis of Evil.
(thanks to pete for suggesting the cheesy title.)
last week i declared that "oxalis = evil" and promised further explanation. here it is.
those cute little pink flowers that i thought were so cheery back in february have, over the last several months, come to show their true intent, and it is not to lend color to an otherwise dreary and gray season.
what started as a few plants scattered through the grass has become enormous colonies of oxalis. yes, it is nice and green, but it chokes out everything in its path and grows like, well, a weed. it doesn't get tall and scraggly, but it stops at nothing in its quest to overtake the yard.
"dainty pink flowers" my patootie.
the plants national database lists more than a few varieties of oxalis, native as well as introduced. it exists in every state except alaska. how's that for distribution. i haven't positively identified our oxalis, but i think it is oxalis violacea (violet woodsorrel).
once you've let it go too long, eradicating oxalis becomes a near full time job. the kind we have grows from small bulblets, which then multiply into dozens of tiny bulblets, which in turn grow larger and multiply themselves. and on and on, ad infinitum. i shudder to think of the number of these things hiding in our yard.
darin has become quite adept at rooting out oxalis clumps; i don't have quite his skill, but i have greater perseverance. in part, i think, because i feel guilty about letting the sneaky things have free rein for so long.
there is a place oxalis -- the native sort, that is -- but that place is not in the middle of my yard. if i had a "woodland" sort of setting, i might well consider oxalis. but i don't, and darin does still have a certain attachment to small patches of st. augustine lawn. thus it must be gone.
oxalis has officially been designated one of my least favorite plants. the other being liriope.
Posted by Erica Bess Duncan in Problems, Weeds | Permalink
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Comments
They are a cool brand of plants, for years I use them as a Halloween decoration, because of their color and their shape.
Posted by: Tadalafil | Nov 2, 2010 4:03:37 PM