Wild and Weedy Wednesday: Marsh Parsley and Clover

Last year I periodically joined Cathy of Words and Herbs with posts featuring wildflowers/weeds.  Well, the relatively abundant rain we've received this winter has already brought out a couple of prominent weeds masquerading as wildflowers in my garden so I'm joining Cathy once again.  Additional 'Wild and Weedy Wednesday' posts may follow as other weedy plants attempt takeovers.  This week there are two I want to call out.

The first, Cyclospermum leptophyllum, also known as marsh parsley, surprised me.  It's not that I haven't seen it before.  Although I hadn't identified it by name, it's previously shown up here and there but I've never seen it take over a large area.  This year it occupied roughly a third of one of the raised beds in my cutting garden, including an area I'd planted with Anemone coronaria 'Mount Everest'.  As I'd grown Nigella papillosa there the prior year, I initially thought the foliage coming up could be self-seeded Nigella - until I finally looked at it more closely.

I zoomed in really close to capture the tiny flowers of this plant.  While the ferny foliage fooled me, the flowers made it obvious that the plants weren't Nigella papillosa.  When I looked at the foliage more carefully, it was also noticeably finer and darker green than that of Nigella.

I'd already started pulling the plants up when I took this shot.  To say they thickly covered the surface of the bed would be an understatement.

Removing the marsh parsley was made more difficult by the fact than I'd laid plastic-coated wire mesh over the beds after planting them to keep the raccoons and possums from digging.  While I was successful in thwarting the critters, I literally had to cut out the wire mesh around grown plants to dig out the weeds.

Marsh parsley has a long taproot.  I filled the trug on the right with the plants before I was done.  A single Anemone coronaria had managed to sprout beneath the blanket of the parsley.  I suspect it's too late to expect the rest of the Anemones to pop up.

Technically, marsh parsley is edible but a number of online sites warned readers not to eat it as it can be toxic, at least if consumed in any significant quantity.  In the past, it's been used as a diuretic and antispasmodic medicine.  The plant has spread worldwide in temperate and tropical areas.

The second weedy wildflower that appeared with the rain is Trifolium repens, commonly known as white clover.  My feelings about clover are more ambiguous.  It appeared in my garden years ago, probably brought in with the imported topsoil I added to my front garden years ago when we removed the lawn we inherited.  It also took over a large area but it was pretty and the bees loved it so I let it stay until it got too tall to easily walk through.

It seems inclined to plant itself between the paving stones in my front and south side garden areas.  As I've had trouble getting creeping thyme to thrive in some spots, I don't mind when it fills in, at least until it entirely covers the stone path.

Its flowers are pretty and they're bee magnets.  The flowers are only just beginning to appear.

On the left, you can see clover mixing with succulents and the first sprouts of ornamental bunny tail grass, Lagurus ovatus.  On the right, it's shown sharing space with creeping thyme, Thymus serphyllum 'Elfin'.

I've noticed that a lot of people online recommend mixing clover into their grass lawns.  Reportedly, clover helps to prevent the development and spread of many of the common weeds that infiltrate lawns.  It also fixes nitrogen in the soil, which means it serves as a natural fertilizer.  Forbes Home presents the pros and cons of growing clover here. 

On a separate topic, I've cleared all but one plant out of the succulent bed I've targeted for renovation.  Yesterday morning I had one cubic yard of cactus-succulent soil dropped off in our driveway.  Stage two of the project is kicking off!

My goal is to get the soil additive out of the driveway this week!

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