Dandelions: Death on the Lawn
It’s the very definition of springtime: the cheerful sight of a robin pulling a worm out of the new green grass. But the robin who goes worm-hunting on a well-tended lawn may be bringing more than a tasty meal home to his youngsters. If the lawn has been treated with a pesticide, the robin and his family may become statistics. It’s been estimated by the Audubon Society that more than seven million wild birds are killed by the aesthetic use of lawn pesticides in the United States, every year. Aesthetic use: that doesn’t mean agricultural pesticides to grow food crops. That...
Read MorePoison Ivy: Hairy Vine
There are almost as many ways to climb trees as there are species of vines. Grapevines have curly tendrils that grab branches, while Virginia creepers use little suction-cups. Asian bittersweet corkscrews its way round and round the tree trunk. But poison ivy’s method of ascent is unique. Poison ivy gets to the top by growing thread-like rootlets all along the length of its stems. At first the rootlets appear as little patches that look like tufts of fuzzy hair. The furry roots secrete a glue-like substance which virtually cements the vine to tree or wall. As the main stem ages, more and...
Read MoreCan You Eat Poison Ivy?
In my poison ivy research I keep running into the old belief that eating a leaf of poison ivy every day in the spring will make you immune to the itch.
Read MoreGood Lawn
I saw a sight the other day that froze my blood. There was a toddler, a hapless infant, sitting on a lawn. Not even a blanket underneath him, mind you—the poor child was sitting right on the grass. Made my blood run cold. Why? Because it was a lawn made of nothing but blades of grass. Close-cropped and bristly as a Marine’s haircut. Not a weed to be seen, not a leaf of clover, not a dandelion, not a plantain leaf. Nothing but grass. So what? That’s what a lawn is supposed to be, right? I suppose so. But it doesn’t stay that way naturally. Dandelions, clover, plantain: they’re all are highly...
Read MoreDo Dogs Get Poison Ivy?
Do dogs and other species of animals get poison ivy? As far as I’ve discovered, humans are the only species to have such an extreme dermatitis reaction.
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