Sudden infestation with this yellow flowered low-leaved tall gangly plant

[Patty Winter]

I got one of these years ago:

I just used it again a few days ago. I generally close the bottom part manually, slowly, so as not to squish the spider as would probably happen if I let gravity close it.

Patty

[Danny D.]

That thing is ingenious!

[The Daring Dufas]

Cool, you can release the innocent little spider outdoors away from your house or take it at least a mile away so it can't find its way back to your home. ^_^

TDD

[Pat Kiewicz]

Yes, those are the pods. Right now they are immature. They will grow, ripen, and begin to dry and split open. You want to gather them (for seed) just before the pods open. Young pods can be harvested and eaten.

[Kay Lancaster]

Your arrow is pointing towards an immature silique, the fruit of the plant... that is a maturing ovary (aka gynoecium). If you cut one in half crosswise, you'll see two chambers, each with seeds.

I still can't tell which of many possibilities your particular members of the mustard family are (there are a lot of them in California!), but it is indeed a member of the mustard family, now mostly called the Brassicaceae, but Cruciferae is the older classical name for this family. Typically four separate sepals, four separate petals, six stamens (often two short and four long) and a two-chambered ovary.

Usually edible, though some are not. Some species pick up lead and other heavy metals from the soil (remember all the years of leaded gasoline), which can render them toxic.

As always, identify a plant properly before feasting on it.

[Danny D.]

The only problem I've had with the glass jars is that the last big fat (or so I had thought) black widow spider suddenly had babies! Hundreds of 'em.

Next time, I'm not keeping her in the jar for more than a day or two before I relocate her.

[Danny D.]

Thanks. Wow. There are lots and lots of seed pods on just one plant!

No wonder they seem to be taking over my "wasteland".

Note: The descriptions say wild mustard takes over wasteland; I wonder how the mustard 'knows' that it's wasteland?

[Danny D.]

Thanks for the helpful identification.

What I see clearly (and which matches the wild mustard ID) are:

- 4 unveined yellow petals (aka sepals)

- 6 long things (aka stamens), 2 of which are shorter

- One thing in the middle (aka pistil)

And, now I recognize there are:

- Lots of seed pods (aka immature siliques)

And:

- Lobate leaves which radiate out of the ground:

Plus:

- Hairy stems

And, most unusual, that it "takes over (my) wasteland":

One remaining question: Q: How does it know "my" yard is currently a wasteland?

PS: The sprinkler system is partially broken; there's an electrical problem in some of the zones in that they don't work electrically but they work mechanically if I turn them on at the box in the ground.

[The Daring Dufas]

You could always let her run for Congress. ^_^

TDD

[chaniarts]

right now, i have a 2" scorpion in a jar on my office desk. creeps a lot of people out, though that keeps the traffic into my office down.

[Kay Lancaster]

Turn the flower upside down and you'll find there are 4 green sepals, then the four yellow petals.

Yup. Also called the gynoecium. The end of the pistil is the stigma (where the pollen lands and germinates), then there's a constricted region just below that, the style (pollen tubes germinate on the stigma and grow down through the style, and eventually fertilize the ovules in the thicker, basal part, the ovary or gynoecium.

Nah, not unusual at all. "Natura abhorret a vacuo" -- "Nature abhors a vacuum. You've got a whole lot of open ground there with bare soil. You've got 50 or 100 years worth of seeds sitting dormant in the soil, ready to grow as soon as they get their chance -- you're not supplying enough water for the plants you want to grow to grow well and fill in the soil, so weed seeds that can take the conditions that are on offer grow instead. "Canopy closure" -- growing enough plants to completely shade the soil -- is one of the major ways of controlling weeds (which are generally plants that do well in disturbed soils). In arid lands, there's not enough soil moisture to support a true canopy most of the time, so the spacing of plants is defined by how big an area they need to get enough moisture from the soil. I presume you normally grow a lawn in this area, probably something pretty unsuitable for the amount of natural rain in the area, like Kentucky bluegrass. It dies, and gives the weedy mustard a chance to grow. In other words, your soil is telling you to grow native plants, or at least plants adapted to the area, instead of ones adapted to England.

Oh yes, one other gardening proverb to consider "One season's seeding is

5 season's weeding." Except that it's really more like "One season's seeding is 50+ years weeding.

If you're interested, here's some background reading for you:

Kay

[Danny D.]

Couldn't be too much worse than Pelosi or Boxer!

:)

[Danny D.]

I just shipped this lovely lady to you, via USPS Express Mail:

What I really need is a square-sided large thin-walled glass jar to take better pictures of my captures...

[Danny D.]

Well, there's plenty of sunlight, poor soils, and no water to speak of ... so, you're right - the only thing that grows are the weeds.

In fact, as you surmised, on my unwatered lawn, are basically these two plants (wild mustard and some kind of other nasty looking thing):

Looking closer at the nasty looking thing, it has nasty leaves:

And, a nasty purplish headress:

I think it's some kind of horrid thistle all over my fescue lawn:

[The Daring Dufas]

Sorry, I couldn't help it. ^_^

TDD

[Kay Lancaster]

Try pulling one up... you may find they're attached to an underground root and stolon system, in which case you may be dealing with Canada thistle, Cirsium arvense, a noxious weed* in California, and you might want to consider some minor chemical warfare, as fragments of the underground portions of the plants about 3/8" long can start new ones, as can all the seeds.

They can basically take over an area in a few years.

Seeds last up to about 20 years in the soil, and can travel miles on the wind because they have a little "parachute" of hairs (pappus), and also many songbirds eat the seeds.

*Noxious weed is a legal definition, meaning the plant is a peril to agriculture. I think C. arvense is a class B, but it's been 30 years since I lived in CA, so you might want to check it. In some counties, everyone may be required to control it, in which case you're legally obligated to deal with it.

I control it here in my Oregon yard with heading the flowers** as soon as I see them, and spot applications of glyphosate on established plants in the fall. Heading has to be done vigilantly-- at least once a week.

**Canada thistle is a member of the Asteraceae (also known as the Compositae) the dandelion family -- each of those purple "petals" is an entire flower, and the flowers eventually develop one-seeded fruits that are dispersed by birds and wind.

FWIW, I had a bunch of downed trees a couple of years ago, and burning them was the only practical means I had to get rid of them. So I built the bonfire on top of a big Canada thistle to get an idea of what might happen in a wildfire. The fire burned for about 6 hours, got very hot, and left a lot of very alkaline ash. Next year, guess what I had under the bonfire site? Only the Canada thistle survived, and it was doing well.

>

[chaniarts]

thank you, but i already have my own set of these, along with brown recluse spiders, so need no more. what i also have a lot of and encourage are funnel spiders and tarantulas, but not indoors.

[Danny D.]

Thanks for that information.

Here's a picture of the underside of the wild mustard flower:

Is the green arrow pointing to a (football-shaped) sepal?

[Danny D.]

Hi Kay,

I started pulling one up, then another, and another, and another, until ... after a long while ... I filled my chest-high green recycling bin with the thistle!

I'm not sure how they process those things at the town recycling center - but those thistle thorns are nasty!

[Danny D.]

Worse. Purple *thorny* thistle weed!

And, I might add, the photos below should show why I've grown to instantly hate pulling out this purple thorny thistle weed!

1. I knew these dainty rubberized garden gloves didn't stand a chance:

1. And, I instantly realized these leather & cloth gloves wouldn't work:

2. I wasn't shocked when the thorns went right thru deerskin gloves:

1. But, I was surprised thick pigskin was no match for the thorns:

2. At the pressure you need to grasp & pull, even the thicker cowhide gloves were painfully allowing thorns to puncture me:

1. I was almost out of options, when I grabbed my heavy gas welding gloves - which hadn't been used in years, so they were as stiff - and even they allowed a few thorns in - but for the most part, they were the *only* gloves that weren't too painful to use to grasp the thorny thistle plants tightly enough to pull them out of the dry ground.

Rarely have almost *all* my gloves failed me - but, the thorny purple thistle weed was a challenge that dared to be overcome!

Any neighbors must have looked at me oddly when I finally figured out how to pull them out without bleeding, as I held them up in the air in my gloved hand exalting in my thorny triumph!