Yet Another Cycling Forum
Random Musings => Miscellany => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: andyoxon on 25 March, 2017, 11:40:17 am
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This appears to be sprouting up all over the lawn. Any ideas as to what it is? Reddy stem and two opposing leaves. It's even sprouting up in the neighbour's porch guttering...
Pic below...
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/UxqxTsFuQDCgDoh0zLdLLBvGgTQT2ACnrGu_M3jd0DK4UaDPAjqyxind4urx5QIKBuEVzzoFa1c50Gts9O6rR9sc8iAF16zitrEmGUYz5B-JQmnjgqZjswwpolmU6Hm0aEoQBZmTnZYOeBBAUcVnGPSl_DQfKfwsDhKUbuKhGIM7c5qZ1Y1tvYQdQ_FcPmcKSkAnhY18Q-HqbLe0A5u9T_HBzmrCJzH4uP-bJ33vciq7I2SnfRBmp4S80HE8QQ3BLZJD9XFPXdQh7_gtbdztcXJr3mcFnsiXtxXwVoL68K7HqwihKLEsFimwsrIN7tSj7FKiIBRSdykaq46et4M-zUBiRjHK-2tu-GeU1dHHTXQuwaQu5Of3iVywqHd77JpkhBjfgYM1W13DYchWctf3NoaUChmcOeFRLj_pvFI5txIZRVn870XtpI-g4pS_jE7WFTK34whaJ7l8PW9R8uFyN6DQsH_1hraiOE3dqzm3Y2rjrkwZURRQFOy2XmN1bcVipVKKe17HwEvjA2yA84S3864SovNfd5nBDy22hoixepvZLx10Zr1wQJuLJ8nzKf_jnlc3iamIdsab_--HaUYlVT0PT7QqsYuVBdEU3Lrx6ivEAOvy-7hR=w800-h600-no)
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Sycamore seedling pull it out before it gets any more leaves.
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Thanks. They are all over the front lawn, several hundred. There is a big sycamore tree nearby, but I'm sure we've not had it like this before. I don't like using weedkiller, but... What about repeated mowing?
Have a look at this... http://www.downgardenservices.org.uk/tree_seedling.htm Seem most like ash, as leaf edge is smooth, but ash seems wider:
(http://www.downgardenservices.org.uk/treeseedlings.jpg)
v.similar to this (American Green ash)...
(https://austinbotany.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/f_pennsylvania_seedlings.jpg)
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Sycamore seedling pull it out before it gets any more leaves.
OP's photo isn't loading for me, but our triffid patch seems to be infested with the things this year (probably related to the three enormous sycamore trees that nobody in a position of sufficient authority seems willing to do anything about).
If it doesn't respond to double-bastard strength glyphosate, I'm going to have to do Gardening. >:(
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If you pull them out while they are only two leaves big (those are 'nursery leaves') they will come up quite easily with a satisfiying length of root attached. If you leave them until they have recognisable sycamore leaves on they are a bugger to pull up. Pulling them out is the easiest way to do it.
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Yes. Definitely sycamore seedlings. They are a bugger due to the sheer amount of them but are easy to deal with.
The ones on the lawn are no problem at all as they will not survive even cursory occasional lawn mowing. However, those in your flower bed or borders need to be dealt with as an ongoing project. They lift very easily when they are young as pictured. Just a finger and thumb pull out. The longer you leave them the stronger the root system becomes and the greater the difficulty in removing them.
Don't panic. You don't need to remove them all in one session. Just make it something you do for a minute or so every time you visit the garden just pick out a few of the bigger ones.
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Thanks. I decided that since I'd literally be out all pm pulling them from the lawn, I'd mow them instead, hoping they're slow growing - eventually give-up.
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Don't panic. You don't need to remove them all in one session. Just make it something you do for a minute or so every time you visit the garden just pick out a few of the bigger ones.
Yeah, but I only visit the garden every couple of months when I sacrifice perfectly good cycling weather to a triffid-killing session, or to show the mistake agent the fence that they still haven't fixed.
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Clare, I reckon you're right about them being sycamore - the first two leaves seemingly v. different from subsequent leaves...
I blame the earthworms... ;)
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This is sycamore. Most of my clients' gardens have them this spring. Sycamore had a bountiful fruit crop last year in Somerset. Nothing to worry about. Clip your lawn as usual.
Do not use herbicides.
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Those leaves are the cotyledons, they come out of the seed which is why they look different. And yes, they're sycamore and my garden is full of them this time of year. Those and ash. They swamp my oak tree unless I pluck 'em (carefully nurtured from an acorn, I always wanted an oak tree). Quite a few had already rooted in my garden and they're buggers to get out (gardener mostly just cuts back the new growth).
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If you miss one in the border for a year they're foot-high whips that are a devil to tug out.
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If you miss one in the border for a year they're foot-high whips that are a devil to tug out.
I'm reasonably sure that's how the trees in our 'garden' happened.
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The overground train to Gospel Oak used to let me have a good snout at peoples' gardens as were rolled past, you'd see a rented house where the tenants couldn't be bother to garden and in a year it's waist high, then like Ian says if there's a sycamore or ash nearby you get a thicket in no time. When the apocalypse comes and the human race is wiped out but cities and wildlife are left intact the sycamores will colonise in a flash, in 30 years London would be an immense copse.
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When the apocalypse comes and the human race is wiped out but cities and wildlife are left intact the sycamores will colonise in a flash, in 30 years London would be an immense copse.
S M Stirling's Dies The Fire series generally has a hilariously USAnian view of all things British, but one of the few[1] things that isn't silly is the sheer amount of hard work involved in reclaiming the lands north of Watford from the mass of head-high brambles in the decades after all high-energy-density technology[2] suddenly and mysteriously stops working. (The BRITONS who survive the initial mass die-out hole up - as is traditional in such situations - on the Isle of Wight.)
[1] The suggestion that then prime minister Tony Blair may have ultimately been fried in his own grease by cannibals seems plausible, as does Mad King Charles making thatched roofs and morris dancing compulsory.
[2] No explosions, no high-pressure gases, no electricity, no nuclear chain reactions...
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Starts with brambles and scrub. Thirty years and it's silver birch everywhere. A hundred years and it will be ash and beech (and probably sycamores). Three hundred years it will be oaks. And we'd be back to the 'ancient woodland' which covered Britain before these pesky humans got here.
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With a fair chunk of Scots Pine and willow around my way