Sounds innocent enough, but don’t let that fool you. It is a thug of a plant if you live in the south, especially if you love natives and have fairly moist soil, as I do. Some nurseries still irresponsibly sell this plant, so if you encounter it at a garden center steer, clear of them. I wouldn’t trust the advice of anyone who sells it any more than I would trust someone dealing in kudzu …. or meth.
“Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”
They’ll say you can keep it contained in a pot or some other nonsense, and at first this seems true. They might say it is good for pollinators, but I have never noticed any on it- while my other plants both native and exotic do host lists of butterflies. I am not even sure if a goat would eat the stuff, but if they do I may invest in a couple if I can find some.
But if you get sick or too old to regularly maintain your yard and garden, or just forget about this monster, it will spread and creep into every quadrant, arising from bits blown into the yard by your landscaper, or dropped accidentally when weeding, compost, the vegetable matter stuck under your mower deck, and so on. It doesn’t take much for tiny pieces of this plant to set root, and if you go on vacation or don’t battle the heat in the yard all summer, once summer rains set in this plant runs like a rabbit everywhere, over everything, choking even trees, and will get away from all manual means of control. A piece of stem can lay on concrete in the sun yet not become dead or dry for days and days, then rejuvenate if it gets swept into an unsuspecting flower bed.
Unless you have a lot of money to buy weed killer, take a pass on collecting this invader. There are plenty of other yellow flowers to grow instead which behave well and can actually be an asset.
#InvasiveWeeds #Gardening