Weedy oxalis

AW awilson@avonia.com
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:41:26 PST
Thanks to Rodger, also Roland and Laauw for your respective comments. I
quite agree with them. However, what I really wanted in posting the message
was the noted behavior of just one species, Oxalis convexula. Do you, or
anyone out there who grows it , know if it behaves as a weed in your area?
It does in mine. I'd like to make an insertion in the Wiki on this behavior
as general as possible. Maybe San Diego is the only place where this
behavior is seen. Frankly, I think not because, in his original notes,
Michael Vassar indicated that there was tendency for it to form crown-based
bulbils. Perhaps he based his observations only on where he grew it, just
north of Los Angeles.

Thanks
Andrew Wilson
San Diego

 One difficulty is that a species that is weedy in one place may be
perfectly well behaved in another. Andrew Wilson mentioned O. convexula,
which gives us a good example of this phenomenon: evidently well behaved at
Mary Sue's in northern California, apparently a thug of the first water in
San Diego.

If our wiki is to include information on weediness, it would be even more
helpful if instances of weediness were accompanied with specifics of
location; the name of the city would usually be enough.

Indeed, location is all-important in determining whether a plant will thrive
or not. Plants which are dead easy in, say, the eastern US not uncommonly
turn out to be invalids in the PacNW, and vice versa. The annual variation
in temperature and precipitation are perhaps the primary factors, but by no
means the only one. Soil pH (or perhaps the concentration of free Ca++ ions
in the
soil) is another important factor.

All the more reason, everyone, to remember to include your location in your
.sig block

Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada



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