Dayflower Difficulties

 While the rest of the world is occupied with either embracing or avoiding the inevitable summer heat of July and August in the Northern Hemisphere, ProfessorRoush is additionally fully engaged in my annual war with the Common Dayflower, Commelina communis.  Not as strikingly blue as its cousin, the Erect Daylily (Commelina erectus), C. communis is described in KSWildflower.org in unglowing and uninspiring terminology as "A common weed. The flowers bloom for one day, wilting into a moist, blue mass after a few hours."   I would add that if a "weed" is benignly considered to be any plant that is growing in an unwanted place, then the Dayflower is an overachiever; pernicious to its neighbors, invasive, impervious to glycosophate, and seemingly impossible to eradicate.

As an aside, the Wikipedia entry regarding Dayflowers is a model of "more than you ever want to know," and was obviously edited by some wild-eyed and socially questionable Dayflower fanatics.

Dayflower is supposed to be an annual (I'm not as convinced about that as Internet sources seem to be), so my primary angle of attack is to rip it out before it goes to seed.  Unfortunately, it has an uncanny ability to hide among irises and daylilies as it creeps along on the ground, popping up only as it gains the unsanctioned support of an neighbor plant, so I have to watch closely for the light blue flowers and rip them out at first appearance.  Equally unfortunately, the plant blooms during the hottest days of the year, so I battle both the plant and heat stroke simultaneously during my periodic forays into my garden beds.

Often, I find the Dayflower imitating and then trying to replace a desired plant (like an alien pod of 1950's science fiction) while mowing the lawn, as I did the weedy clump pictured above.   Beneath all those Dayflower stems and leaves is a desired 'Vintage Wine' daylily, which was blooming without care only the week before.  So, in this instance as in many others, I stopped mowing and attacked, wiping sweat away from my eyes periodically so I could discern daylily foliage from dayflower, and just generally resembling a bulldog attacking a bowl of soup.  Anyway, the final result looks much better (photo at right), a relieved daylily with a chance at survival.

 I'll finish by taking this moment to show you my latest lawn tractor modification.  I took this old 5-gallon bucket and have attached it to the tractor "hitch" point in order to always have immediate access to pruning tools and spray bottles of "Grass-B-Gon", yellow nutsedge herbicide, and brush-killer.   In other words, all the things I can't live without as a gardener in Kansas.   As I mow, I often spot a random clump of wild dogwood in a rose bush, or some yellow nutsedge in a bed, and it is much more effective to hit the brake and take care of it in the moment, rather than try to remember later what it was that offended me, where it was, and then make another trek to get the tool or spray I need to fix it.  I love my new bucket-basket!

Numbing Nutsedge Nightmare

Sometimes, a little gardening knowledge is a burden too difficult for the gardener's soul to bear.  We see things that others don't, the subtle hues that don't belong, the texture that doesn't blend, and it tears at us, ripping away the mantle of civil society and bearing the dark soil within.  We try to seek justice, try to shift the weight of wisdom off our shoulders, but find no relief.  Such it was with ProfessorRoush this past week.

Every day, as I come to work, I pass the simple bed pictured above along the sidewalk, a few short yards to the left of the entrance.  On May 30th, I noted with some amusement the overgrowth of yellow nutsedge in the bed (circled in red) among the struggling daylilies (circled in blue), and brought it to the attention of the individuals who oversee the care of the bed, passing along both my identification, my recommendations for a nutsedge-specific herbicide, and my general angst at discovering this unholy mess outside my workplace.

 Today, I noticed that the bed had been sprayed (see the photo directly below) and that all the plants were dying, nutsedge and innocent daylily alike.  Obviously this area was sprayed with glyphosate or some other non-selective herbicide.  While my call to arms had been heeded, my renowned advice had not.

While cogitating this distressing development, reeling and staggering from the renewed load placed upon my shoulders, I meandered to the beds on the right side of the entrance, and realized to my horror that these beds were no better, in fact far worse, than the original abomination was.  Preserving them for prosperity, I present them here for you to ponder:

Bed portion 1; Containing a world-beating crop of yellow nutsedge (circled in red in the foreground), with some barely surviving ornamental grass in the back (circled in blue).  I think this grass was originally Panicum 'Cheyenne Sky' or something similar.












Bed portion 2: A really not-delightful mix of more original ornamental grass (blue circles), crowded into the margin by what I think is a wild tri-lobed sumac (orange circle), and more yellow nutsedge (red circles).







Bed portion 3:  A miserable grouping of ornamental grass (blue circles), common dayflower (yellow circles) and yellow nutsedge (red circle).  The common dayflower, as you know from my previous rants thereof, is a virtually indestructible weed in this region.






I shall suffer on here, sickened by the senselessness of the slaughter I've seen, but not in silence, nay, I have again unleashed the furies of  unsolicited advice on the herbicidal unwashed.  Unrequited, I may soon have to resort to guerrilla gardening in the shadows of night, spray bottle and trowel in hand, a furtive figure following a path to futile madness.   

Blue Flowering Grass?

Common Dayflower

Sometimes Nature, herself, smacks us on the forehead with the creation of a little unsolicited garden plant combination that draws our immediate attention.  I had just that sort of mental face-slap as I strode into the veterinary college within the last hour, noticing these pretty blue flowers waving among a ornamental grass clump to the left of the entrance.  My semi-aware brain immediately snapped into frantic overdrive.  Blue flowers?  Ornamental grass?  What new cultivar was this?

A closer look revealed the beast lurking within the beauty.  The ornamental grass clump is a Panicum cultivar, probably something like 'Cheyenne Sky' or 'Shenandoah', beginning to turn red on the tips here in late July.  I grow several at home, and every Fall I enjoy the soft spikelets atop the stiffly erect blades of the grass.  Here, in front of the limestone building, this blue-green cultivar stands out in nice contrast, although it doesn't create quite as lively a scene as it does in my constantly wind-swept garden. 

An Unholy Combination

The flowers, of course, are those of the Common Dayflower, Commelina communis, a thug that I've mentioned before and wrote about in my book, but never really discussed here.  It is quite a beautiful flower, really.   The gorgeous dual sky-blue petals soar above the bright yellow staminodes, while the less conspicuous anticous fertile stamens hover over the single, smaller, obscured white petal.  Harmless in appearance, the plant is actually one of the most invasive plants I've ever known, a fearless Asian invader bent on world domination and more ruthless than any human barbarian horde.  I obtained a single clump early in my gardening career from a friend fiend who grew them beneath a shade tree.  Released into the unrelenting sunshine of my Kansas garden, I quickly found that it spread ruthlessly, impervious to glycosphate. 2,4-D, and everything else I've thrown at it.  I've tried to burn it out, starve it, and stomp it to death.  In its native environment, it grows primarily in moist soils, but here it has laughed equally at droughts, heat, drowning and frigid winter temperatures.  I haven't let a single plant flower in my garden for 15 years now, and still it persists, defying my best efforts at Dayflower genocide.  My sole hope is that somewhere, hidden in a small laboratory, a mad scientist is working on a small nuclear bomb suitable for garden-size applications. 

No matter how beautiful this combination seems, consider this a forewarning that you would have to be crazy to try it in your own garden.  Of course, I'm overlooking the fragile sanity level of most avid gardeners.  Anything to outdo the neighbors, right?  Several of you already have mentally placed this combination into your gardens, perhaps along the garden paths where it can be experienced at close quarters, perhaps just around that specimen bush, where it will surprise and delight a visitor?  Don't.  I'm telling you, just don't.  God only knows how many years, State workers and tax dollars it will take to eliminate the Common Dayflower from this one clump of ornamental grass.