Americanized Velvetleaf Gardens Away From Crops and Vegetables

Summary: Americanized velvetleaf gardens as contained or courtyard ground cover cannot cripple crops and vegetables with defensive chemicals and viral diseases.

velvetleaf's orange flower, foliage, fruit (lower center) and stem: Steve Dewey, Utah State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images

Americanized velvetleaf gardens alleviate ground reflection and surface runoff losses but advance through croplands, farmyards, fencerows, gardens, orchards, pastures, rangelands and wastelands and afflict farm crops and garden vegetables with viral diseases.

The herbaceous, naturalized, non-native annual backs off from its original promise as a potential fiber crop brought from India to colonial America in the mid-eighteenth century. The weedy member in the Malvaceae family of mallow-related herbs and shrubs challenges food production and water uptake by corn and soybeans and conveys viral diseases. It damages corn and soybeans with chemicals that disrupt food production and water uptake and destroys crops and vegetables with tobacco streak and turnip mosaic viruses.

Chemicals, seeds and viruses expose velvetleaf to British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Quebec provincial, Canadian federal and Colorado, Iowa, Oregon and Washington state governmental weed sanctions.

Round, short hair-filled cotyledons 0.24 to 0.39 inches (6 to 10 millimeters) across fit atop short hair-filled, 0.39-inch- (10-millimeter-) long stalks purpling toward the soil level.

The seedling stage's embryonic leaves give way to first through mature leaf stages whose irregularly toothed margins, veined undersides and velvet hair-garnished surfaces go limp nightly. Mature velvetleaf, commonly named butter print, buttonweed, cottonweed, elephant ear, Indian hemp, Indian mallow, piemaker and velvetweed, has 1.97- to 7.87-inch- (5- to 20-centimeter-) long foliage. The alternate-arranged foliage implicates diamond-shaped arrowleaf sida, heart-shaped caesar weed, heart-leaved sida, velvetleaf and whorled mallow, kidney-shaped alkali mallow and round-leaved mallow and lance-shaped spiny sida.

Americanized velvetleaf gardens also juggle alternate-leafed, related, weedy crested anoda with triangular foliage, flower-of-an-hour and high mallow with three-lobed leaves and oval to elliptical-leafed yellow leafbract.

Mature, 11.82- to 90.55-inch- (30- to 230-centimeter-) tall velvetleaf, described by German botanist Friedrich Kasimir Medikus (Jan. 6, 1736-July 15, 1808), knows flowering, hairy, leafed-out stems.

Leaf-to-stem attachment angles called axils launch orange-yellow, perfect, regular, solitary flowers, 0.59 to 0.79 inches (15 to 20 millimeters) across, for July to August bloom times. Many fused stamens make a protective column around the only pistil and mingle with five petals and five united sepals on every velvetleaf and velvetleaf-related weed. Hormones, nutrients from white taproots and photosynthates in leafed-out stems nourish velvetleaf, scientifically named Abutilon theophrasti (Theophrastus' [371 B.C.-287 B.C.] velvetleaf) throughout its sole growing season.

Each fruiting green to black schizocarp, 0.79 to 9.84 inches (2 to 2.5 centimeters) across, offers Americanized velvetleaf gardens 12 to 15 five- to 45-seeded mericarps.

One velvetleaf plant optimally produces over 17,000 dull gray-brown, flattened, kidney-shaped, 0.11- to 0.13-inch- (2.9- to 3.4-millimeter-) long, 0.10- to 0.11-inch- (2.6- to 2.9-millimeter-) wide seeds.

Temperatures between 75.2 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit (24 and 35 degrees Celsius), optimally at 0.75-inch (1.9-centimeter) depths and maximally at 2.99-inch (7.6-centimeter) depths, quicken seed germination. Round-leaved mallow and velvetleaf seeds retain respective in-soil viabilities of 100 years and of 50 years while arrowleaf sida, caesar weed and flower-of-an-hour viabilities remain unknown. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and Washington respectively spurn weedy alkali mallow, crested anoda and flower-of-an-hour, caesar weed and yellow leafbract, round-leaved mallow and flower-of-an-hour.

Americanized velvetleaf gardens treat indoor and outdoor courtyards and isolated problem sites to ornamental  ground covers away from nonweedy but related cotton, hibiscus, hollyhock and okra.

turkeys passing behind velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti): Steve Dewey, Utah State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

velvetleaf's orange flower, foliage, fruit (lower center) and stem: Steve Dewey, Utah State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images @ http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1459825

turkeys passing behind velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti): Steve Dewey, Utah State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images @ http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1459827

For further information:

"Abutilon theophrasti Medik." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/19600012

Dickinson, Richard; and Royer, France. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

Medikus, Friedrich Kasimir. 1787. "1. Abutilon Theophrasti." Ueber einige künstliche Geschlechter aus der Malven-Familie: page 28. Mannheim, Germany: Akademische Buchhandlung.
Available via MDZ (Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum Digitale Bibliothek) Digitale Sammlungen @ http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/fs1/object/display/bsb10302489_00038.html

Weakley, Alan S.; Ludwig, J. Christopher; and Townsend, John F. 2012. Flora of Virginia. Edited by Bland Crowder. Fort Worth TX: BRIT Press, Botanical Research Institute of Texas.