Having used roundup on a commercial scale for many years let me make some comments. First roundup is something like a synthetic sugar. To work the plant has to absorb the roundup through pores in leaves and sometimes green stems.Once inside the plant it poisons it inside out. It is not absorbed through woody tissue or tree bark. ROUNDUP DOES NOT STIMULATE THE GROWTH OF SEEDS!! In nature many grasses give off chemicals from the roots that inhibit the germination of other weed seeds. When you spray your area that is probably loaded with grass the seed inhibitor quits being produced. That is why you suddenly have an explosion of other baby weeds sprouting. If you call the makers of roundup( Monsanto chemicals) they will tell you that after about one week any roundup in the soil disintegrates into "nothing". It turns into a harmless nontoxic chemical. It drives me crazy when I hear goofy stories like roundup stimulating seed germination because it does not! I do not know where theses stories start but lets get are facts straight. Many times after I used roundup in an area rain will wash it off the leaves. It needs some hours to penetrate into the leaf pores ( called stomata). I have found the premixed sol MON .makes doesn't work very well . Buy a quart of the concentrate and mix to direction and add one teaspoon of dawn for dishes to the mixture. Spray away. You must wet the leaves for this to work.. Now if you are healthy and have A LOT OF FREE TIME you can remove weeds by hand. Have you ever hand removed weeds from 1/4 acre. It will give you a new outlook on life and help prepare you for the Olympics! After you almost drop dead trying this method you will find why a lot of people grow their plants in pots. Use steam sterilized potting mix and you will kill any weeds in the mix. The mix can also be gently heated in an old turkey roasting pan in the oven. Let me add I greatly admire people that hand weed. It is good exercise and harmless to nature. I truly hope I have not offended anyone but we must get our facts straight. There are some very nasty weed/bug killers out there and I don't care to poison the area where I live. If anyone needs help with the use of chemical weed killers they may contact me. As a retired commercial grower I am sure there isn't anyone in our group with more experience using them. Just imagine controlling weeds on 75 acres.Russ H. at jadeboy48@aol.com In a message dated 4/1/2013 2:55:37 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, ds429@comcast.net writes: Dear Christian, Just today an amateur gardener friend asked me to identify a plant that was beginning to invade his yard from his neighbors. It is our local Cardamine sp. C. bulbosa? Here it is called "bitter cress." It is one of the nastiest weeds that I have encountered here. I do not use Roundup, but I have found that hand weeding has some effect on it. The problem with our species is that, if you don't root it out before it goes to seed, you have lost the battle because it shoots out the seeds when the pods are ripe. I would eat it , except that it is extremely bitter, even when it is young. And if I had an infestation of Worsleya, especially the white one, or of the pink Pamianthe, or the red Hymenocallis, I think I would probably also choose hand weeding. Dell in SE Pennsylvania ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christian Lachaud" <christian.lachaud@gmail.com> To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Monday, April 1, 2013 5:22:21 PM Subject: [pbs] Cardamine hirsuta Dear all, I would like to ask your advise about Cardamine hirsuta. Few gardener friends and I have noticed that roundup herbicide activates the seeds of Cardamine hirsuta, that are asleep in the soil (by the way, I ignore how long the seeds of this plant survive asleep). In areas that were free of Cardamine the previous years, treated with roundup during the summer, a dense population of this plant is sure to be found next spring. However, this burst has nothing to do with cleanness of the area after herbicide application, because other places manually weeded will never exhibit the phenomenon. Roundup application and Cardamine infestation is so highly correlated that people here use to say that roundup "makes it come". I know that there has been some cases of genetic pollution from GMO into wild species through pollen. I ignore if some GMOs requiring roundup to get their seeds activated do exist ? If yes, wouldn't this example be one such case of genetic pollution accident ? Have people observed this phenomenon elsewhere in the world ? It is worth asking the question since some people eat Cardamine hirsuta and advertise it as delicious. However, if it had been turned accidentally into a wild GMO requiring roundup to wake up and grow, would it be that safe for human health ? Any comments, ideas, and tracks will be much appreciated - Many thanks. *Dr. Christian M. Lachaud, PhD* _________________ http://www.saffron-crocuses.com/ _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/