That mysterious Muppet plant
I fondly refer to one of my favorite (behind Lepidium latifolium, of course) California weeds as the Muppet plant. If Jim Henson were to ever create a plant, I am convinced it would look something like this one. In fact, if you ask me, Pepe, the Muppet shrimp, looks similar to this plant. It's fantastic. It can grow to be taller than I am. Its bottom, vegetative portion, forms an open pyramid of leaves, which is topped by a flamboyant inflorescence, with sprays of florets bobbing in all directions. All it lacks is a pair of googly eyes and a puppeteer manipulating its roots!
For at least a year, I've believed the Muppet plant to be escaped asparagus. (I love the terminology of weed science. You can't beat the fact that agricultural and horticultural plants growing on their own are called "escaped".) I swear someone told me it was asparagus. It's not asparagus. We started to doubt this ID when my protege, uh, undergrad, Lillian found some asparagus pictures online. Those aspara-guys did not look like Muppets. My faith was shaken, but given the vagaries of photography and "representative specimen", I still cherished the hope that it was asparagus, if even a different species of it.
Last Wednesday, a dramatic chain of events initiated when we beached our fleet services car on a levee smashed the Muppet-asparagus hypothesis to bits.
In the summer you will often find me tooling around California looking for weeds. (This summer even more than most. I've already put 5 weeks of fieldwork under my belt.) Last Wednesday was no exception. Unfortunately, Lillian and I got stuck somewhere in the vicinity of Stockton (the asparagus capital of the world). Fieldwork has made me no stranger to being stuck. I've often been stuck in the airboats, lodged atop a mat of aquatic weeds, but this was the first time I've been stuck in a car. Let me first say: it was not my fault; we were the pawns of fate, the playthings of circumstance. Just as we reached the spot where our narrow, gravel levee road descended to the field, an oncoming mack truck full of dirt was ascending. I edged over to the side of the road to let the dirt-truck, which was flooring it to summit the levee, pass. Everything was going fine for the first 2/3 of the truck, but it looked like the back wheels were going to cut the corner more sharply than the front, so I edged a little bit farther off the road.
The dirt-truck continued on, our car ground to a halt. I now know to back away from oncoming dirt-trucks. Lillian, the dirt-truck driver (who was very friendly), and I got out to survey the situation. Only three wheels were on the ground. In itself, this probably would not have been a problem. Unfortunately, the passenger side of the car was grounded on a slight rise on the side of the levee (fortunately, we were on the field side of the levee, not the river side). Try as I might, the car was not going anywhere. The dirt truck driver radioed her dispatcher to send someone to help us and went on her way.
Half an hour later a cute guy with a very large pick-up truck came by to pull us out. Afterward, as he led us on the shortcut through the farm (we were ready to head back to Davis by then), he cleared up all of my questions about asparagus: On a whim, I asked him what the fluffy, feathery crop that was alongside us was. I've driven past tons of the stuff, and have always wondered what it is. Really, I think farmers should have signs labeling their crops like that guy off of I-90 in eastern Washington does (I love that). "That's asparagus!" our knight in truckin' armour declared. He also described its life cycle a little bit, but we paid little attention as I was too struck with joy at knowing what the crop was and dismay that it was definitely not the Muppet plant and Lillian was too struck with laughing at me.
Back in lab with the bulk of fieldwork completed, today's obession was to learn what the Muppet plant is.
It took me a while to track down our muppety friend. First I browsed through pictures on calflora, but I got denied before I got too far since apparently there are limits on how many things you can look at without registering. Jerks.
Then I browsed calphotos. This also got me nowhere since those pictures were taken all artistically and close up of the flowers (like I've ever seen the muppet flower) instead of giving a general view of the plant.
Then I biked out into the country until I found one to bring back to lab with me. Fortunately this is Davis, and you don't have to go too far to get into the country and find a weed. My idea was to key it out with the Jepson manual. I am, however, inept at that, and it really didn't help that the bugger isn't flowering right now, since plant keys like the Jepson rely heavily on flower characteristics. Still nowhere.
By this time, various people were trying to offer suggestions.
Finally, I googled "common california weeds", found an IPM extension site, and clicked through all of them until I found it. Success, at last! I was delayed briefly by a postdoc who thought my clicking through all of them was stupid. Obviously I could narrow it down and exclude the grasses and the species I knew, but it's quicker to do it systematically since that doesn't require reading the names.
And there we are. Prickly lettuce. Wonder how I got asparagus from that =D.
For at least a year, I've believed the Muppet plant to be escaped asparagus. (I love the terminology of weed science. You can't beat the fact that agricultural and horticultural plants growing on their own are called "escaped".) I swear someone told me it was asparagus. It's not asparagus. We started to doubt this ID when my protege, uh, undergrad, Lillian found some asparagus pictures online. Those aspara-guys did not look like Muppets. My faith was shaken, but given the vagaries of photography and "representative specimen", I still cherished the hope that it was asparagus, if even a different species of it.
Last Wednesday, a dramatic chain of events initiated when we beached our fleet services car on a levee smashed the Muppet-asparagus hypothesis to bits.
In the summer you will often find me tooling around California looking for weeds. (This summer even more than most. I've already put 5 weeks of fieldwork under my belt.) Last Wednesday was no exception. Unfortunately, Lillian and I got stuck somewhere in the vicinity of Stockton (the asparagus capital of the world). Fieldwork has made me no stranger to being stuck. I've often been stuck in the airboats, lodged atop a mat of aquatic weeds, but this was the first time I've been stuck in a car. Let me first say: it was not my fault; we were the pawns of fate, the playthings of circumstance. Just as we reached the spot where our narrow, gravel levee road descended to the field, an oncoming mack truck full of dirt was ascending. I edged over to the side of the road to let the dirt-truck, which was flooring it to summit the levee, pass. Everything was going fine for the first 2/3 of the truck, but it looked like the back wheels were going to cut the corner more sharply than the front, so I edged a little bit farther off the road.
The dirt-truck continued on, our car ground to a halt. I now know to back away from oncoming dirt-trucks. Lillian, the dirt-truck driver (who was very friendly), and I got out to survey the situation. Only three wheels were on the ground. In itself, this probably would not have been a problem. Unfortunately, the passenger side of the car was grounded on a slight rise on the side of the levee (fortunately, we were on the field side of the levee, not the river side). Try as I might, the car was not going anywhere. The dirt truck driver radioed her dispatcher to send someone to help us and went on her way.
Half an hour later a cute guy with a very large pick-up truck came by to pull us out. Afterward, as he led us on the shortcut through the farm (we were ready to head back to Davis by then), he cleared up all of my questions about asparagus: On a whim, I asked him what the fluffy, feathery crop that was alongside us was. I've driven past tons of the stuff, and have always wondered what it is. Really, I think farmers should have signs labeling their crops like that guy off of I-90 in eastern Washington does (I love that). "That's asparagus!" our knight in truckin' armour declared. He also described its life cycle a little bit, but we paid little attention as I was too struck with joy at knowing what the crop was and dismay that it was definitely not the Muppet plant and Lillian was too struck with laughing at me.
Back in lab with the bulk of fieldwork completed, today's obession was to learn what the Muppet plant is.
It took me a while to track down our muppety friend. First I browsed through pictures on calflora, but I got denied before I got too far since apparently there are limits on how many things you can look at without registering. Jerks.
Then I browsed calphotos. This also got me nowhere since those pictures were taken all artistically and close up of the flowers (like I've ever seen the muppet flower) instead of giving a general view of the plant.
Then I biked out into the country until I found one to bring back to lab with me. Fortunately this is Davis, and you don't have to go too far to get into the country and find a weed. My idea was to key it out with the Jepson manual. I am, however, inept at that, and it really didn't help that the bugger isn't flowering right now, since plant keys like the Jepson rely heavily on flower characteristics. Still nowhere.
By this time, various people were trying to offer suggestions.
Finally, I googled "common california weeds", found an IPM extension site, and clicked through all of them until I found it. Success, at last! I was delayed briefly by a postdoc who thought my clicking through all of them was stupid. Obviously I could narrow it down and exclude the grasses and the species I knew, but it's quicker to do it systematically since that doesn't require reading the names.
And there we are. Prickly lettuce. Wonder how I got asparagus from that =D.
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posted by Meg at
10:49 PM
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