weeds Archives - Wonderful Weed Weekly

June 18, 2019October 10, 2021

Wonderful Weeds Weekly about: Weeds and Lawns

I found the information below interesting as many of my customers find weeds in their lawn unbearable.

They like a weed and moss-free, stripy cut lawn.

Well, this is quite an art in itself as I found out on this nice website: How to Create a Spectacularly Striped Lawn or Grass Pattern by Tim Stephens

**A stripey lawn at Hodnet Hall Gardens** (Picture by Matt Summers)

But to create this is a very high input and costly affair as it will need lots of maintenance with feed + weed-killers and watering in dry years!

Is this all worth it?

Maybe there is a market for a stripy astro turf!

May 16, 2019October 12, 2021

Wonderful Weed weekly update!

**Wild Strawberry flowering in May along an old shady wall.**

As some of my loyal readers may have noticed, it has been several weeks ago when I did my last post on the very large Asteraceae family!

Unfortunately you may have to wait till I am getting a lot less busy, with all my activities in and around my professional gardening..

Hopefully will see you back in several months time as there are many families and genera still not written about in my Virtual Etnobotanical Garden….

Will also attempt to rewrite some of the older blogs as several pictures have disappeared and I can’t add those back in as there is now a new editing version of WordPress.

November 24, 2018February 13, 2024

Bindweeds and Dodders

This week I would like to talk about a bit of a climbing menace known as the Common or Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium). Then later about the fascinating Dodders!

**The whitish rhizomes and growing shoots of Hedge Bindweed or Calystegia sepium.**

Is there any use to this plant you may wonder?

Please read on and find out!

I will also write about the rest of its family; the bindweed family or Convolvulaceae!

Blue background is for general interest; pink background is for medicinal use or negative information; green background for all sorts of uses. Pictures by Matt Summers unless stated. If the plant occurs in Birmingham and the Black Country, this is mentioned as FBBC in the contents page.

The Bindweeds are in the Convolvulaceae or Bindweed family, which is number 115 in Stace in between the Boraginaceae (114) and Solanaceae (116), which is the potato family.

This family has 4 genera growing in the British Isles namely; Convolvulus, Calystegia, Ipomoea (which are ‘introduced’, mostly ornamental climbers from N. America) and finally Cuscuta or Dodder.