Sunday, April 18, 2010

Fig Buttercup

Earlier in the year I came across a patch of Fig Buttercup, Ranunculus ficaria. This is an invasive weed that takes over flood planes and forms dense mats that prevent most other plants from growing in their patches.

According to the Plant Conservation Alliance:
Some examples of native spring ephemerals include bloodroot, wild ginger, spring beauty, harbinger-of-spring, twinleaf, squirrel-corn, trout lily, trilliums, Virginia bluebells, and many, many others. These plants provide critical nectar and pollen for native pollinators, and fruits and seeds for other native insects and wildlife species. Because fig buttercup emerges well in advance of the native species, it has a developmental advantage which allows it to establish and overtake areas rapidly.

I'd blogged about some of those flowers on that list as they bloomed in my backyard. Imagen all of them getting replaced by one species that only blooms for a week or two. Granted it's an abundant sources of food but it's whipped out all other nectar sources in the bloom phase. Imagen having a lush garden of one crop that only produces food the first week of June and nothing else for the rest of the year.