Americanized Puncture Vine Gardens: Droughty, Spine-Tingling Barriers

Summary: Americanized puncture vine gardens get droughty, spine-tingling creosote, Jamaican fever vine, lignum vitae, Syrian beancaper and Syrian rue barriers.

puncture vine's lemony yellow flower, foliage and "goathead" fruit nutlet; Kahului, central Maui; Thursday, June 12, 2003, 11:20:12; image #030612-0069: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Americanized puncture vine gardens act as natural barriers along boundaries, buildings, fences, houses and pavement as long as sheep abstain from feeding there and provided that signs advise of bristles and spines.

Sheep wool exports bring puncture vine outside the annual herb's native range along the northern fringes of Africa's Sahara Desert and in southern Europe's Mediterranean-fronting countries. Fruits and seeds catch on sheep while shoots cause light sensitivity that condemns livestock to life cycles in shade and swollen heads, called bighead, in sheep. Puncture vine sometimes damages the central nervous system to such a degree that sheep do not recover from high quarter-stagger, a disease that disrupts their gait.

Bristled foliage and seeds and spiny fruits ease their way into almost any vehicle tire and exact open wounds and physical pain upon livestock and people.

Seedlings favor thick, 0.32- to 0.59-inch- (8- to 15-millimeter-) long, 0.12- to 0.16-inch- (3- to 4-millimeter-) wide cotyledons with creased, rough-textured upper surfaces and notched tips.

The oblong, peach- to green-colored embryonic leaves grow from stems whose colors go toward salmon orange-pink below cotyledons and whose surfaces get covered with short hairs. Mature puncture vines have mat-like, prostrate, spreading growth habits 16.4 feet (5 meters) across and 8.53-foot- (2.6-meter-) deep, rootlet-riddled taproots 21.65 feet (6.6 meters) in diameter. Bristly, dense hairs inundate green to red-brown, 7.88-foot- (2.4-meter-) long stems around which compound, 2.36-inch- (6-centimeter-) long foliage is positioned oppositely in Americanized puncture vine gardens.

Leaves juggle two 0.39-inch- (1-centimeter-) long basal membranes called stipules and eight to 16 hairy, 0.19- to 0.59-inch- (5- to 15-millimeter-) long, 0.19-inch- (5-millimeter-) wide leaflets.

Seed germination kicks off, within two weeks, April- through October-blooming communities of pale yellow solitary flowers in the axil unions of puncture vine leaves and stems.

Flowers, 0.79 inches (2 centimeters) across, look brightly busy with one pistil, five petals, five sepals and 10 stamens in alkaline, dry soils like their homeland's. Each perfect, regular flower's petals and sepals measure 0.12 to 0.47 inches (3 to 12 millimeters) and 0.12 to 0.19 inches (3 to 5 millimeters) long. Americanized puncture vine gardens nurture, five weeks after germination, podlike, 0.47-inch- (1.2-centimeter-) long schizocarps, within which nestle five triangular, two- to four-spined, woody segments called mericarps.

Puncture vine, also called bullhead, caltrop, goathead, ground burnut, Mexican sandbur, tackweed and Texas sandbur, offers one to four seeds per mericarp and 10,000 per plant.

One to two 0.12- to 0.19-inch- (3- to 5-millimeter-) long spines protect puncture vine seeds, whose six-month to one-year dormancy at 1.97-inch (5-centimeter) depths precedes germination.

Ridged, tan, wedge-shaped, white-bristled, 0.19- to 0.22-inch- (4.7- to 5.7-millimeter-) long, 0.14- to 0.24-inch- (3.5- to 6-millimeter-) wide seeds quit being viable after five soil-bound years. Puncture vine, Zygophyllaceae family member scientifically called Tribulus terrestris (land-dwelling caltrop), receives unwelcome weed status in Iowa and North Carolina and in Alberta and British Columbia. It shares weed designations with New Mexico-shunned Syrian rue in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon and with Syrian beancaper in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

Americanized puncture vine gardens team the Zygophyllaceae family-related caltrops creosote, Jamaican fever vine, lignum vitae, Syrian beancaper and Syrian rue into drought-tolerant, research-worthy, spine-tingling natural barriers.

puncture vine's flowers and leaves: Howard F. Schwartz, Colorado 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:

puncture vine's lemony yellow flower, foliage and "goathead" fruit nutlet; Kahului, central Maui; Thursday, June 12, 2003, 11:20:12; image #030612-0069: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/starr-environmental/24008513703/; Forest & Kim Starr (Starr Environmental), CC BY 4.0 International, via Starr Environmental @ http://www.starrenvironmental.com/images/image/?q=24008513703

puncture vine's flowers and leaves: Howard F. Schwartz, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images @ http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5499323

For further information:

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

Linnaeus, Carl. 1753. "Tribulus terrestris." Species Plantarum, vol. I: 387. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/358406

Americanized Field Violet Gardens Need Not Be Seedy and Weedy

Summary: Americanized field violet gardens do not have to be seedy, weedy invasions of edible and ornamental plots and of strawberry and winter wheat fields.

closeup of field violet's flower; bridleway west of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, East of England; Monday, May 6, 2013, 13:53:26: Peter O'Connor aka anemoneprojectors, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Farmers, gardeners and nurserymen allude to aggressive seeding against edible and ornamental plants, especially strawberry and winter wheat, even though no North American country applies weed designations to American field violet gardens.

Federal, provincial, state and territorial legislation generally bases official weed status upon blaming species for bringing down crop yields, eco-system well-being, human health and species diversity. They consider natives and non-natives seedy weeds even though Eurasia's English or sweet violet and Europe's field violet and Johnny-jump-up thus far collect no such designations. The common names European field pansy, field pansy, heartsease and wild pansy discourage weed sanctions against field violet, literal translation of the scientific name Viola arvensis.

Exasperation eclipses enjoyment of introduced culinary, medicinal and ornamental roles in kitchen gardens when 250 seedlings emerge per 10.76 square feet (square meter) of pre-allotted space.

Blunt-tipped, oval to square, 0.12- to 0.19-inch- (3- to 5-millimeter-) long, 0.12- to 0.16-inch- (3- to 4-millimeter-) wide cotyledons function as embryonic leaves during seedling stages.

Mature field violets give off somewhat upward to straight up-and-down growth habits because of partial shade, partial sun tolerances and wintergreen scents from crushed fibrous roots. Mature members of the Violaceae family of herbaceous violets have semi-upward to straight up-and-down, 3.94- to 13.78-inch- (10- to 35-centimeter-) tall stems with hairy branch angles. The alternate-arranged, oblong to lance-shaped, 0.79- to 3.15-inch- (2- to 8-centimeter-) long, 0.39- to 0.59-inch- (1- to 1.5-centimeter-) wide upper foliage includes margins with rounded teeth.

The bases of the upper foliage in Americanized field violet gardens juggle leaflike membraneous structures called stipules and divided into five to nine distinct, narrow segments.

Rounded to oblong, 0.39- to 0.59-inch- (1- to 1.5-centimeter-) long, 0.28- to 0.47-inch- (7- to 12-millimeter-) wide basal leaves keep their margins toothed and stipules small.

Basal foliar clusters called rosettes link basal leaves on alternate-arranged, 0.39- to 0.79-inch- (1- to 2-centimeter-) long stalks and look up into sparse-haired, veined foliar undersides. Axil unions of stalked leaves with stems maintain mauve- or purple-marked, pale yellow to white, solitary flowers on 0.79- to 1.58-inch- (2- to 4-centimeter-) long stalks. The lateral and the lower of the irregular, perfect flower's petals respectively need to be bearded and, to 0.08- to 0.16-inch (2- to 4-millimeter) lengths, spurred.

Field violets, whose bloom times occur from April to October in Americanized field violet gardens, offer one pistil, five petals, five stamens and five united sepals.

Biology produces 2,500 seeds per field violet and propels 75-seeded, spherical, tan-colored, 0.19- to 0.39-inch- (5- to 10-millimeter-) long capsules over 6.89-foot (2.1-meter) distances upon maturity.

Temperatures between 41 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit (5 and 15 degrees Celsius) at 0.19- to 0.39-inch- (5- to 10-millimeter-) depths quicken germination of field violet seeds. Glossy, oval to kidney-shaped, yellow- to black-brown, 0.04- to 0.08-inch- (1- to 2-millimeter-) long field violet seeds remain viable for six to 11 years in soil. Viable seeds from 400-year-old excavations suggest truculently survivalist life cycles for field violets, described by Stockholm-born Swedish botanist Johan Andreas Murray (Jan. 27, 1740-May 22, 1791).

Americanized field violet gardens in semi-shaded containers, indoors and outdoors, sometimes trick English or sweet violets, field violets and Johnny-jump-ups into targeting lower seed production levels.

flower and leaves of field violet (Viola arvensis), also known as field pansy; Hockenheimer Rheinbogen natural area, Hockenheim, northwestern Baden-Württemberg state, southwestern Germany; Tuesday, June 2, 2015, 15:52: AnRo0002, Public Domain (CCO 1.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

closeup of field violet's flower; bridleway west of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, East of England; Monday, May 6, 2013, 13:53:26: Peter O'Connor aka anemoneprojectors, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/anemoneprojectors/8731447790/

flower and leaves of field violet (Viola arvensis), also known as field pansy; Hockenheimer Rheinbogen natural area, Hockenheim, northwestern Baden-Württemberg state, southwestern Germany; June 2, 2015, 15:52: AnRo0002, Public Domain (CCO 1.0), via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20150602Viola_arvensis1.jpg

For further information:

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

Murray, Johan Andreas. 1770. "Viola arvensis." Page 73. Prodomvs Designationis Stirpivm Gottingensivm. Gottinga (Göttingen), Germany: J.C. Dieterich.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/prodromusdesigna00murr#page/73/mode/1up

"Viola arvensis Murray." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/33800006

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.