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

[mleblanca]

[Danny D.]

Oh oh .... mustard weeds may be protected ... oh my God!

BTW, I hope I'm allowed to "take" *this* California animal I just caught in the house moments ago, while reaching for a level to hang a mirror for the wife:

I need better spider-catching tools than this plastic container:

Now she is destined for transportation into my ravine, along with all the other spiders, snakes, and mustard-gas flowers:

[Danny D.]

Indeed. Check out the front row of the wife's spice shelf:

She grows the red-hot stuff herself, because she can't get 'em hot enough at the store ...

[Danny D.]

Hmmm... I was thinking these things were the actual seed pods:

Can someone confirm whether these are the actual seed pods?

[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

[songbird]

Kay Lancaster wrote: ...

yes, but once you get a cover crop growing which shades the area the mustard will have a much harder time taking over again, if you can keep at it for a few seasons you can effectively eliminate it other than having to spot weed a few times a season. that's still much less time i spend in this one garden than i used to (when it was full of weeds and the soil was much poorer).

now i actually let a few mustard plants grow and bloom (but not scatter seeds) because we like the early yellow flowers.

songbird

[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:

[Billy]

Ignore Kay at your own peril.

[songbird]

i'm well aware...

that was a picture from few years ago.

this year i've only had to pull a few plants out of that same patch. the seeds are still there -- if i were to return the area to bare dirt i'd have them attempt to take over again.

the roots are quite tough, if you don't get all of them they'll resprout. the good news though is that the plant doesn't grow all that fast as compared to many others. checking once a month has been good enough (after they've done their spring-time flowering). i keep clipping them off and letting them lay as compost. the few that do resprout don't grow much at all, they can't get much light through the trefoil or alfalfa.

songbird