Fun with Bermuda Buttercups (Oxalis pes-caprae).

The Editor

The Home and Garden Section

The San Francisco Chronicle

To the Editor:

The recent article on one gardener's annual weeding war of attrition, "Oxalis haunts gardener's dreams," (The Chronicle, January 15) was interesting. Frankly, I enjoy the annual winter leafing out and the cheerful yellow flowers of the closely-related Bermuda Buttercup (Oxalis pes-caprae). It happily fills in those winter empty spaces left from last summer's annual flower and vegetables gardens. It conveniently dies back in the spring when one is ready to start another warm-weather planting.

Volunteer plants are very interesting to me. Sort of pot luck from Mother Nature: In my backyard garden, there is a three-year-old Coyote Brush (Baccharis pilularis), a native shrub, that now is about ten feet high and about ten feet wide. In the summer it produces clusters of tiny yellowish flowers which attract many bees and some Hummingbirds. It also harbors many small insects which are consumed by Sparrows and Hummingbirds and one tiny female Ruby-crowned Kinglet (she is crownless), who appears each winter.

Another volunteer is a fast growing Red Alder (Alnus rubra). This three-year-old deciduous tree is now about twenty feet high. Its seeds are consumed by Sparrows, Finches and Squirrels.

Even the much-maligned common Crab Grass (Digitaria sanguinalis) has its virtures: it makes nice low-growing evergreen border in shady areas where it would be a major challenge for a gardener to maintain flowers in. Its tiny oval seeds are eaten by Mourning Doves, Sparrows and Finches. Its seeds also were traditionally used by Africans and Europeans as a food, ground into flour or cooked in gruel.

As a gardener, I suppose that I would be characterized as a little apathetic when it comes to weeding: I prefer to channel my energy of anger and hostility into letters that about those that try to despoil the our earth with unnecessary wars and with toxic chemicals.

Yours truly,

James K. Sayre

15 January 2005

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