Heron’s
bill (Erodium sp., AKA fillaree or storksbill) is blooming in fall. It used to be one of the earliest flowers in
the spring; this is new. But many spring
shrub flowers bloom again in fall in Grants Pass. It started sprouting in midsummer in watered
parts of the Reinhart Volunteer park, possibly because of cloudiness from
Southwest monsoons getting this far north, and wildfire smoke shading,
humidifying and cooling us for several weeks, after a long stretch of very hot
weather in July. Wood is made mostly
from carbon dioxide and water, to which it returns when burned.
Its leaves are long and divided, growing in a rosette from fall through winter. They can grow flat or fluffy, coarsely finely divided, with petioles that can be red, green, or shades between of pink or orange. They hybridize readily. As it blooms, it grows to about knee-high unless mowed. If it is only mowed, it keeps making seed, like any annual weed, flowering and seeding under the mower blades. Mowing thus does not control its spread. Beating young plants into the dirt with a weed whacker can thin them out considerably. Doing it again can finish the job.
Mowed heron's bill with fat petals. Note the long, upright seed pods, center
It has five-petaled 1/4 "-3/8" pink flowers whose petals vary from thin to fat. They make seed pods 2-4 inches long that stick straight up as they grow and ripen. The pods split into two seeds of about ¼ - 3/8 inches long with barbs on the seed and a long tail that spirals as it dries and pops the seeds off the plant. The tail has a straight part at the end that sticks out at right angles to the seed and spiral. When it gets wet, the spiral unwinds, and with the tail sticking to the ground, screws the seed into the ground at the other end—or into your pet’s fur, or eyes, nose, or ears. It grows all over Grants Pass in neglected areas.
I used to wait until heron’s bill bloomed to kill it, the blooms being the easiest way to find it, and not being certain that it would not come back if cut earlier. But the flowers close by late morning; it makes seed fast; and it is harder to see after being mowed. So I now kill it as I see it all winter, and it does not come back.
The easiest way to kill heron's bill is to pull it from soft soil. In hard soil, I cut it under the crown, through the root, rather than trying to pull the taproot. As an annual, it has no buds on its roots and dies if the crown is cut off, unlike dandelions and other perennials.
My favorite weed cutting tool has long been carbon-steel gardening scissors. But this year, I have been cutting under weed crowns with a folding box cutter, that I keep in my back pocket. I've also used a hula hoe, which get most of the crowns, and then go back and get the rest a few days or weeks later. This year, I found hand hula hoes at Bimart that I can keep in my back pack and cleared most of a wet patch this fall.
Seedlings en masse
As shocking as it might seem as a natural gardener, I am willing to use glyphosate to kill large expanses of weeds, as it is the most natural and safest of herbicides, being an amino acid, glycine, with a phosphate group attached. It is only absorbed through green surfaces like stems and leaves. Bacteria eat it in soil; it does not absorb into roots or bark. Worms and pill bugs love it and multiply under its influence, as it is rich in nitrogen. It is also a broadleaf and annual plant fertilizer, being also rich in phosphorus for making flowers and seed.
Worms and pill bugs attract moles, which make a mess. Broadleaf fertilizer grows broadleaf weeds, but perennials like clover or creeping Jenny (Lysimachia) can be planted two weeks later and suck up that fertility, helping crowd out the weeds. I think that the city at one point sprayed glyphosate all over the wild areas along the walking path from Greenwood to the pedestrian bridge in Reinhart Park and didn't plant anything to soak up that fertility, as all the plants along it are common annual and/or broadleaf weeds, mostly noxious.
Tiny heron's bill after glyphosate spraying in early spring.
Another problem arises if glyphosate is used on baby weeds when temperatures stay below 75 degrees F. They can immediately make flowers and seed instead of dying. The dwarfing effect can persist for two generations, leaving one having to manually kill a lot of tiny seeding weeds
Without such influence, weeds tend to crowd each other out as bugs eat the losers in the struggle for light and nutrients, leaving many fewer, much larger weeds to flower, which is the easiest time to pull a plant. When annual plants flower, the roots shrink as stems and flowers grow, and the stems become tough by the time they flower, which makes it easy to pull them.
There is a related plant, called cranesbill (Geranium sp.), with slightly smaller fringed pink petals and short seeds that don’t stick into your pets. The leaves are round and divided, with long petioles. It is not nearly as noxious as heron’s bill, though it is listed as a noxious weed in Oregon for its takeover habit. Ironically, heron's bill is not. It is easier to pull than heron’s bill, and not near as common in Grants Pass.
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