Plant Lovers' Almanac: Wicked plants of the West

On a recent westward road trip my wife and I met many interesting plants: from different types of mistletoes to millet fields, from sunflowers to skunkbush (a Colorado version of sumac). There was music in Nashville, Tennessee, Native American kivas near Santa Fe, New Mexico, the glorious collapsed volcanic caldera in the Valle Grande caldera near the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. And the canyon trails and dwarfed gambel oaks and yellowing Utah serviceberry foliage at Mesa Verde National Park, followed by sweeping movie-reminiscent views in Arizona’s Monument Valley, and flowers upon flowers. But first, let's take a look at one of my favorite Ohio trees.

River birch

Betula nigra. This has become the most widely planted birch for landscapes, both for its ornamental features and its resistance to the bronze birch borer insect, Agrilus anxius, a cousin of emerald ash borer. Into the late 20th century we cherished white-barked birches for landscapes, but learned the hard way that European and Asian white-barked birch species succumbed to this native to North America bark beetle. Better to use our own native white-barked birch, paper birch, or better yet try river birch with virtually no susceptibility.

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River birch, a medium-size tree at maturity (30-40 feet high), has a fine texture in the winter landscape with the branch and twig pattern and fruits, attractive foliage in the spring, and great exfoliating (peeling) outer bark, at least for the first two decades. There was some resistance to its more cinnamon bark compared to white-barked birches in earlier years, but cultivars such as Heritage river birch have mostly changed that perception, with the tree's range of cinnamons to pinkish-salmons to creams of bark that peel off in sheets. Highlight these bark features with a multi-stemmed specimen using landscape lighting.

There are two vulnerabilities, first to alkaline soils, resulting in yellowing between the leaf veins and dieback if severe: This is not much of a problem in Northeast Ohio with our more acid (lower pH soils). Second, river birch will drop a lot of yellowed leaves during droughty periods of the summer, though generally this is a temporary problem.

There is a range of interesting selections, including Dura-Heat, which may come in handy as climate changes our arboreal palette. Fox Valley is a densely foliated smaller river birch. And there is even a variegated dwarf form, Shiloh Splash. And if you want to go further afield to an entirely different birch species, try sweet birch, Betula lenta. It has smooth, not exfoliating cherry-like bark, with two great features, wonderfully lemony fall foliage color, and if you scratch the twigs, a delightfully wintergreen aroma. Before synthetic flavors, it was valuable for producing birch beer soda.

We have a 40-year-old, multi-stemmed, probably 45-foot sweet birch in our yard that provides that fresh wintergreen aroma year-round. Now, back on the road, again.

Wicked plants as we went westward

I like topical T-shirts, and one of my favorites is “Wicked Plants,” which I bought at a greenhouse display of such plants (poisonous, hallucinogenic, alcohol-producing plants, irritants, etc.) at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park over a decade ago, inspired by Amy Stewart’s book of the same name. The shirt drew several comments on our trip and more to the point, we met some wicked and at least mischievous plants.

There were sand burs, the fruits of which quickly became embedded in shoes and socks during a short rest area walk in Oklahoma. A man saw me picking them out of my footwear and said he was very familiar with these grassy weeds (Cenchrus) from his Tennessee home.

There were the colorful orange and yellow and red leaves of poison ivy along one our all-time favorite trails, Las Conchas in the Jemez Valley in New Mexico — so inviting.

On a trail in Los Alamos in New Mexico we saw abundant Kochia (Bassia), a Eurasian plant introduced to the U.S. at the start of the 20th century, soon becoming an unwanted invasive in dry prairie, grassland and grazing lands. Kochia has lovely frilly green foliage that changes to fire red, orange and yellow, but can cover up native plants.

And we saw mistletoe plants, including the half-parasite true mistletoe in Kentucky rest area trees. It is seen as a ball of green leaves in various trees. These leaves do photosynthesize and thus it produces some of its own food, but it also sends suckers down into the host plant, stealing some of its photosynthate.

Much more seriously, at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah, we saw dwarf mistletoe, a true parasite, with no green foliage and only a negligible amount of photosynthesis. This parasite seriously stresses Utah junipers there, attaching to its host and stealing its sugars.

In Utah we also saw copious plants of Ephedra, used by many native tribes to make medicines and teas and by early Mormon settlers to make “Mormon tea,” a popular stimulant that evaded Mormon strictures on stimulant-containing drinks. The genus Ephedra isa lovely and unusual primitive gymnosperm plant, producing seeds, but not flowers or fruits.

Finally, in the Southwest we saw many oak galls on the shrub-like gambel oaks. As noted before in Plant Lovers' Almanac, these galls are caused by specific insects that induce the oak to produce homes for the insect larvae that emerge from eggs. For the most part they do not harm plants, so they're not so wicked, but it is a sort of a diabolical hijacking. And there are so many of these highly specific insect-induced galls on oaks alone, literally hundreds, perhaps over a thousand.

Julius Caesar wrote, “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.” Gaul, more or less what we think of as France, was actually divided in Roman terminology not in Caesar’s three but in five parts, but regardless that is nothing compared to oak galls, divided into perhaps — a thousand “galls”!

Vagaries of the open road

Over the years I have always liked unusual road signs, such as one on Interstate 75 near Dayton back in the day when an attempt was made to go metric. The sign read: “Metric signs next 62 miles.” Well, that just proves how tepid was that effort.

Topping this was a sign we passed last week driving I-40 in Oklahoma, past irrigated corn and fields of pearl millet: “Hitchhikers may be escaping inmates.” What to do? Help out the hitchhikers in flight from felons? Especially if the escapee might be from a zoo, and if taken for a feed then Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. The English language! Solved by simply warning: “Hitchhikers may be ‘escaped’ inmates.” Ah, wordsmithing.

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Alternatively, since this was Oklahoma, what if the hitchhiker was John Steinbeck’s Tom Joad?

Jim Chatfield is a horticulture educator and professor emeritus at Ohio State University Extension. If you have questions about caring for your garden, write to chatfield.1@osu.edu or call 330-466-0270. Please include your phone number if you write.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Plant Lovers' Almanac: Wicked plants of the West