Back to South Africa You Foreign Invader!

FAMILY     Oxalidaceae, wood sorrel
GENUS      Oxalis
SPECIES    Oxalis pes caprae (ox-AL-is pez ca-PRAE)
COMMON NAMES  
Bermuda buttercup; African woodsorrel; Sourgrass (United States); Soursob (Australia)

Always on the hunt for foreign invaders, American xenophobics may very well extend their hostility to the vegetal realm. Although I usually lack sympathy with the misguided "America for Americans first"  folks, in the case of the lovely but invasive oxalis, I may feel differently now that I have my own rather large garden covered in the weed each spring.


Schoolkids munch on it; gardeners curse it; fields, pasturelands, coastal woodlands, and river and stream banks abound with it. Sourgrass to Americans, and Soursob to Australians, oxalis. Pull it year after year, you will rarely be done with the thing. It's not especially harmful and usually dies back in dry weather, but in the time when your cultivated plantings are struggling for their start and competing for space, air and sunlight, oxalis is an interference. It's taking our jobs away!!!

It carries around some mythology too as it vagabonds its way through the Bay Area and beyond. It looks like a clover or shamrock, and although it does contain a potentially deadly poison, oxalic acid, you’d have to ingest a LOT before you keeled over. Before that happened, you would probably vomit most of it, just like my cat Perdita who enjoys a few stems and greens now and then.

Its oxalic content is shared with many of our favorite vegetables, notably spinach, chives, parsley, beet greens and chard; there’s a particularly high content in rhubarb leaves but who eats rhubarb leaves, let alone rhubarb itself? For me, I’ve long been hopeful in response to the old quandary, “Reckon the rain’ll wreck the rhubarb?”

My cousin David, an avid gardener in Berkeley, likes to intimately commune in his Berkeley backyard. Following a day of blissful weeding in the nude, he ended up with a terrible rash all over his body. Some oxalic acid, he thinks, migrated into his bloodstream from an open wound. I've pulled a lot of it this spring but mostly only have a slight irritation on my skin afterwards; as a precaution, I break every hour or so to wash thoroughly with warm water and soap. (I don't like using garden gloves while weeding.) After a good rain storm, oxalis comes out easily, yet you may trust that thousands of bulblets remain underground to return to haunt you next year.

Getting rid of oxalis is a true accomplishment after years of patient pulling and replacing soil. Each bulb can produce over 20 smaller bulblets! The wise ones of garden advice-giving suggest that the only things to really sock it to oxalis are:
1. use herbicides with glyhphosate such as RoundUp;
2. completely sift or replace the soil at least a foot or two down;
3. or, starve the soil of sun for a year or more with plastic sheeting.
All eradication solutions seem extreme to me; if you enjoy your garden--and it is of manageable size--you may very well enjoy getting close to the soil and tugging away at the smaller reappearing stems to augment the nourishing space, aeration and light to your cultivated treasures. It is amazing that there are those who actually search out and buy the bulbs to plant oxalis in their yards as a seasonal ground-cover! (Not in coastal Northern California!)

I often begin sitting on the side of a planted bed, and often find myself spread out parallel to the earth on my hip and elbow to pull the oxalis and liberate my other plants.

Face to face with bulblets
yellow-flowered oxalis
earth calls me to attend
my mortality

My husband joked about getting a goat to chew away at the plant, which was prescient in a way as I learned that the complete Latin name of our particular oxalis is oxalis pes carprae, which means sour goat’s foot. Etymologists think this is a reference to the leaf of the plant which looks slightly cloven-shaped (clover-shaped). Eating large quantities of oxalis may not hurt the goat--known for their cast-iron stomachs--but it can be toxic to sheep. The oxalic acid combines with other chemicals in an organic system to deplete oxygen and form kidney stones, among other nasty things, so it is particularly dangerous to those with certain renal and rheumatoid conditions. Contact with large quantities of oxalic acid can cause burns, nausea, gastroenteritis, vomiting, renal damage, skin irritations, and since it can be absorbed through the skin, and make its way into the eyes and upper respiratory system.

In manufacturing, oxalic acid is used in bleaching and anti-rusting products, in metal cleaners. I wondered about whether you could scrub your grill with oxalis and make it come out sparkling, but because of its dilution with other chemicals in the organic plant, it likely would just turn my both my barbecue pit and my hands green.

Oxalis pes caprae loves a Mediterranean climate so we share its invasive beauty with Italy, Greece, parts of Spain, North Africa and Australia. On Malta, it is the most common weed. Scientists are monitoring its take-over of coastal sand dunes in Humboldt County, a likely competitor to that other famous herb grown in Northern California. One observer documented an explosion of oxalis between 2000 and 2005, after the Bureau of Land Management had removed a large area of grass in an endangered plant area using heavy equipment. Apparently, soils were disturbed and soils contaminated with oxalis bulblets were introduced to flower in every greater numbers in subsequent years.

But, just where does oxalis come from? South Africa, would be your answer, home to many other invasive but beautiful species. It is an area of resilience and defiance, of a native people strong and proud to reclaim its borders over the invasion of other “species,” so it should come as no surprise.

TO RID YOUR GARDEN OF OXALIS

*     Repeated and deep pulling of the plant and bulbs

*     Mowing it down periodically

*     Sifting, digging and replacing the soil in which it grows (up to 1 ½” to 2” down)

*     Getting rid of plant refuse in your take away green-waste and not putting any part of the soil that you have replaced in your compost bin or leaving it around in a weed pile.

*     Covering an area with stiff cardboard and over that wood-chip mulch.

*     Applying a herbicide with glyphosate, such as RoundUp, just before the plant flowers (up to a 95% kill-rate).

*    Covering large areas of soil with opaque plastic sheeting for a year or more to starve the soil and the plant of sun.

THE STRANGE AND TRUE STORY OF THE BERMUDA OXALIS SNATCHERS

Moses Brathwaite vs. Nathaniel Weekes

I found a fascinating case in Barbados in 1897 of two women who transported sour grass from one man's mangrove plantation to another man's cane plantation; the owner of the cane plantation was charged with larceny and was defended on some fascinating legal principles. Who would have thought that sour grass was so much in demand that a couple of plantation workers (I don't know when slavery was outlawed in the Caribbean), would want it growing in the fields of another man--or perhaps they were out for revenge, wanting to introduce a pesky weed into another farmer's fields?

Mr. Weekes was charged for standing and watching as two women, Lizzie Green and her daughter, Christian, were employed to cut sour grass growing on the mangrove plantation, the property of the complainant. The women were witnessed transporting some of the cut grass into a cane field belonging to the defendant who took no part in the removal of the grass but happened to be standing in the boundary line between the mangrove plantation and the cane plantation.

Attorney for the appellant was Mr. Goodman; for the defendant--charged with stealing sour grass--was Mr. Greaves. Mr. Greaves argued that his client had only witnessed the transport of the sour grass and had not participated, he should be considered innocent of the charge of larceny. Stealing and receiving the sour grass into his own fields came under the application of a law against stealing someone else’s crops.  The defender made the point that it was “old law that because a man was present when a felony was committed did not of itself make him an accomplice. . . He must not only be present, but must be a participator in the commission of the offence.” (Report of cases relating to Barbados to be found in the English law . . . printed in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1897, and commissioned into the Harvard Law Library on December 12, 1905, and found at http://books.google.com)

I'm Just a Boid Whose Intentions are Good: Oh, Lawd, Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood!

“I am Revenge sent from the infernal kingdom
To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind.” 
(from Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus”)

FAMILY Cathartidae
ORDER  Ciconiiformes
SPECIES Cathartes aura

Once the sun came dangerously close to the earth. The Great Spirit sent Fox up to push it away but when Fox bit the sun to push it away, he burned his mouth and fell back to earth. Still, the sun did not move. Then Great Spirit sent the Opossum to lasso the sun with its tail and pull it away from the earth. Opossum took to the task but only succeeded in burning off all the hair on her tail. Still, the sun did not move. Finally, Great Spirit sent a large bird with strong black wings and feathers all over his body and face. Vulture shoved his beak deep into the heart of the sun and succeeded in moving it farther away. In so doing, he burned off all the feathers on his head and the heat turned his face bright red.               (Native American legend)

Our common turkey vulture, Cathartes aura, has been sorely misunderstood. A New World bird, turkey vulture makes his home from Canada to Cape Horn. Cathartes aura means something like “purifying breeze,” or “cleansing breeze,” or possibly “golden breeze,” depending on whose etymology you accept. Calling the turkey vulture a buzzard is a likely holdover from when English colonists likened the eastern Black vulture to European buzzards which are of the buteo or hawk family. Our California vulture is more akin to the stork than to hawks or eagles; the "turkey"  part of his full name is a reference to his bald red head and dark plumage. The Latin root of the word “vulture” identifies this bird as a skilled “tearer” of food, a technique he uses much in the way we gnaw on barbeque ribs or tear at tough but good-tasting sourdough.

When you see a vulture circling, he is not necessarily sighting a dead animal as many people think. The bird is “climbing thermals,” attempting to gain elevation in order to mark territory, protect a nest, scout for food, or do all three at once. The vulture is constantly on the look-out for pockets of warm rising air and beats his wings somewhat awkwardly at first to locate and climb these thermals. When you see several vultures circling and riding high on thermals, it is called a “kettle,” while a gathering of vultures on the ground is called a “venue.” The turkey vulture is a graceful, skilled glider who can soar up to six hours without flapping his large wings.

Another common misunderstanding about turkey vultures is that they are vicious hunters; in truth, they are not hunters at all, but gentle janitors who scour our roadsides and fields of carrion, occasionally enjoying a salad of decaying vegetation or marshland plants. On a rare occasion, he might sample a heron nestling but, in general, the vulture is not predatory.

Not knowing where and when you will eat next can make you do strange things. Since the turkey vulture depends on carrion--dead animal flesh--he travels far and wide to feed himself and his family, visiting roadsides, farms, ranches, shorelines, hunting grounds and campgrounds. One group of researchers hid dead chickens in a forest and discovered that vultures had no problem locating the hidden carcasses, which they do by sniffing out ethyl mercaptan gas that arises from a deceased animal.

In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Vulture are quite the ‘family-values’ kind of birds we want in our neighborhoods. Cooperative and monogamous, they mate not just for a long season of raising a family but for life. And, since they can live up to 16 years in the wild--and as long as 30 years in captivity--they have had to learn some tricks for keeping interest in their mates. “Toulouse,” a turkey vulture who lives at San Francisco zoo has lived more than 30 years.

They cooperate too, with others in their species while eating. One bird may bite into a tough piece of meat, holding the carcass as it pulls, while another pulls at the opposite end so they can each get a good chunk of food torn from the flesh of a dead animal.

The vulture relies on two powerful senses: sight and smell although he doesn’t see well at night. His lack of a syrinx--the vocal organ found in songbirds--means that he can only grunt and hiss. Fortunately, he has few natural predators and a cooperative spirit, so he doesn’t have to do that very often. He has long legs and vestigial (meaning, he no longer needs it) webbing between his toes.

One seemingly nasty habit the vulture has is the practice of urohydrosis, a fancy word for saying that he poops on himself.

If you get close enough to observe the legs of a vulture, you may see they are coated with a whitish residue. This liquid excrement helps to keep the vulture’s legs nice and cool. Even that baldy red head has a function. Since the vulture can stick his head deep into the orifices of a dead animal to draw out sweet-tasting internal organs and sinews, he can get himself pretty messy. If he had feathers all over his face, they would be hard to clean and could cart around bacteria. Instead, he can easily clean the bare skin.  Because the turkey vulture regularly sticks his strong short, hooked beak into bloody, decaying carcasses, he has built up an incredible resistance to bacteria and disease and through his generous act of clearing our roadways, farms and fields of dead vermin, raccoons, skunks, and deer, we, too, are all the more hygienic.

Turkey vultures like a good picnic and gather around located food. They rarely have to defend it unless a larger, distant relative like a condor or black vulture intrudes; for the most part, predatory birds like hawks and eagles would rather hunt and kill their own meal. Turkey vultures prefer eating out and like the meat of herbivorous (plant-eating) animals best. They do not take food back to the nest, except to tuck some of it into their crops for regurgitating into the mouths of hungry young ones. Yummers!

Northernmost vultures migrate but our local birds have plenty to eat and places to sleep. We are fortunate to see them hovering above McEwen Road, Pomona Street, and Highway 4 as they keep the roadsides cleared of road-kill.

The male turkey vulture is a real ham when springtime rolls around and it is time to hook up: he struts around with wings outspread like a toreador with a red blanket, bobbing his head and rising to his full height. With deep grey-brown eyes and long eyelashes on his upper lid, his two pinkish-white stained legs, two-toned blackish-brown wings, and featherless red head, he is Mr. Fancy courting a dame who tends to be somewhat larger than Himself. Other than size-difference, both male and female look much alike.

When they finally mate, they take off on pair flights, alternately rising in the thermals above their nests with wingtips nearly touching. This lets other vultures know that they have settled on this particular plot of earth and to back off. Both male and female care for the nest of one or two brownish-spotted cream-colored eggs. At least one egg may survive the 35-40 day incubation and be ready to fledge (learn to fly) at about eight to 13 weeks. The family group remains together through the summer and into early fall.

They enjoy a somewhat private home life and are solitary nesters, adopting nests in caves, cliffsides and hollow trees. They do not actually build nests of twigs or found materials and lay their eggs directly on whatever surface of the nest they adopt. The kids like to hang around with mom and dad for a relatively long time as the bird world goes. They will fly to and from the roost, hanging out with one or the other parent for months after fledging, still taking food from their parents. Kind of like our 20-year-olds today.

SOME ADDITIONAL FACTS:

Like shoreline cormorants, turkey vultures like to sun their wings, holding them out and away from their bodies in a posture that made Edward Gorey famous. Their feathers can get misshapen when they soar, so this activity may help them get straightened out.

Turkey vultures are not in danger of extinction although they are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a mother goddess Met who was represented by an Old World vulture, while the Greeks believed the vulture was descended from the mythological griffin. In Greek mythology, the harbingers of trouble. But closer to home, the Pueblo Indians collected vulture feathers to use in purification ceremonies, believing they helped send away evil influences in people and objects. Because the vulture routinely walks a line between the living and the world of the dead, they have been honored for the balance they achieve and teach us to embrace death as a part of life. It is likely this association with death that has brought them an unearned and false reputation of being vicious and evil, but in fact they teach us to understand that death is just one more transition in a larger cycle of nature and life. They also are admired of being skillful conservers of energy as they use natural forces--the thermals--to achieve great heights and soar without effort.

Use a turkey vulture feather to purify your living space and to bring the harmonious and cooperative energy of the turkey vulture into your life. (You might want to wash it off before letting your cat chew on it.)

Apple Blossom Time, Not

It's not apple-blossom time. The apples are round and green already. The Santa Rosa plums have fallen and I've made as much plum jam as I ever want to. The persimmons are like chartreuse nuts and there are many pears on a very old pear tree.

What is blooming in mid-summer in Northern California is music. As I become familiar with neighbors, I've found one who is an autodidact in the field of big band and jazz from the 1920s and 1940s. He began collecting old 78s when he was a teen and after a lifetime has a wonderful collection that still sound great on a turntable.

This is my mother's music, not my own. But when an apple tree is left growing strong in your backyard, I believe it's my luck and duty to take advantage of the sweet nutrition offered. People who come into my life often feel like these heaven-sent gravity blobs, not to put too romantic a spin on it. And so, I've commenced my lessons in 1920s, 1930s, 1940s jazz and big band recordings, tasting for the first time in all seriousness: Fats Waller, Bunny Berrigan, Helen Forest, Boots and His Buddies, the Boswell Sisters, Jelly Roll Morton, Jimmy Noone, Vera Lynn and many more.

TThe green hills are drying up, turning to the gold that California is known for. Summer has arrived with packs of bicyclists rolling through town, and on Sunday, the motorcyclists headed up to Port Costa for an afternoon of socializing and drinking (or drinking and socializing). 

We are here on the estuary, where (to paraphrase an eloquent title of a book of poems by Raymond Carver) 'water comes together with other water.' It's a small town of about 3,000, and yet very busy on weekends especially with pool parties, fish fry's, yard sales, and ice cream socials. I've yet to jump into many of these social activities, except for the once-a-month poetry readings at a deli.
    But I have been getting to know neighbors and find the friendly ones among the less-than-friendly. There's a myth about small towns I think, that people are inclined toward friendliness. I actually think urban centers tend to be more friendly. People live in smaller towns for several reasons: they are born to them and never venture beyond; they marry someone who was born to them and refuses to venture beyond; there's a job drawing them, but they aren't so sure; or, they seek more disengagement, more solitude than a larger city would impose. 
      For us, it is to be closer to natural surroundings and more quiet. After a busy life of being very social, I'm giving in to the introverted part of me that wants less social obligation and more down time to pursue writing projects, art, gardening, hiking on the nearby hills. And, yet, there is a transition, not wanting to give up the old activities, friends, social engagements implied by both of those. So, I drive more, the 17-miles or so into Berkeley, Oakland, across the bridges to Marin and San Francisco. 
    The difference is mostly in the coming-home experience. Turning off the freeway one exit early to take the back road through the hillside, slowing down with the brights on at night because a deer could jump across the road. Pacing myself downward to where waters come together with other waters . . .

Getting a Hood on Your Oriole

As an extremely novice birder, I am enjoying expanding my vocabulary to describe and identify the feathered people living in my new country setting. I could not do this without the help of friends who have flown farther down this particular bird trail. Alison, for one, has become my fall-back gal for identification, but I also rely on the Mt. Diablo Audubon's list-serve, East Bay Birders, for the constant stream of bird notices that are sent out in emails every day, notifying Bay Area folks of who and what and how many are flying through.

My first encounter with birders, however, was not so pleasant. It seemed odd that we would go out all in a bunch, with scopes and guidebooks, while some seemed exceedingly competitive about getting the name out first of a particular bird sited. And, I struggle with whether knowing a bird's name--a man-given nomenclature, after all--really helps me know the bird any better.

Nonetheless, when I spotted this yellow brilliance on a utility pole just outside the house about two weeks ago, I was eager to know what name he goes by (he must surely be a "he," because in the bird realm, the brightest and showiest are usually male). I guessed some kind of oriole by using two or three of the usual birder books (Petersen's, Sibley's), but it was my friend, Alison, who affirmed my suspicion that he is a Hooded Oriole.

Old Hoodie came back after a week. I heard his slight single-noted song, not very fancy but unique and went outside to snap the photo. I feel lucky he has visited twice. This is my first encounter with him and I hope he will return, whether or not I call him by his right name.

We are also getting our red-wing blackbirds in abundance. I took a number of shots down at the Port Costa Reservoir.

Species Coexistence

Our birdfeeder has finally been discovered by a squirrel, and the neighbor's cat Ziggy. I'm surprised it took a month to attract anyone other than the birds, mostly house finch and scrub jay, a few white-crowned sparrows, who visit the front yard feeder.

On the hillside just opposite our front, we have watched cows and wild turkeys taking turns in the green green grass. They never seem to appear on the same morning.

And, new neighbors . . . getting to know slowly. Each seems a separate species; we are all coexisting in this little corner of the world called Crockett: the gang that spills out of the church hall after AA meetings, the sincere activists fighting the refinery's disregard for the local residents, the older people who gather for a free lunch at the neighborhood community center, the poets who come into town for a once-monthly reading series, and the bicyclers and motorcyclists who roll through on a Sunday, getting a taste of the "country."

We finally partook of our nicest restaurant in honor of Julian's birthday and got some nice shots of the Carquinez Bridge. Water and grassland are our largest surrounding neighbors. We're learning to navigate our existence in between these two amazing ecozones.

What the Children Saw

We peeked, each of us with one bare toe
Squeezed into a knothole,
Glad to trade the pain for another look.

We couldn't see any trees back there,
Just a concrete patio blotched with dirt, and
Blood, and in the far corner
Heavy wooden crates, bound with baling wire.

Full of rabbits, hundreds of them,
All young ones, hiding in the shadows.

Over their heads a sheet of crinkled metal
Stretched across the neighbor's yard.
Underneath, lined up against
The back fence were ten silver buckets.

Catching the steady drips from where
They hung, above, with their necks wrung out.

     by Jannie M. Dresser, copyright/all rights reserved 2010