9/03/11 MORE SIGNS OF FALL

SUMAC ARE TURNING CRIMSON

PRETTY, BUT...

ELEPHANT EARS

Friday, 7:00 AM.  69 degrees, wind W, at times blustery.  It is a humid, foggy and unsettled morning. We got enough rain to dampen the garden last night. The barometer predicts partly cloudy weather. 
    The leaves of stagorn sumac, Rhus typhina, in the cashew family (Anacardiaceae)                      
    Are beginning to turn crimson.  Sumac is a fine plant for natraizing large areas and is very coloful, but it spreads viciously and must be used with extreme cation.
    The very invasive Japanese knotweed, actually two very similar spedcies which often hybidize, Polygonum sachalinense and Polygonum cspitatum, in the buckwheat family (Polygonaceae) is blooming.  Known locally as elephant ears, these are massive, speading, bamboo-like plants (although not grasses, as are bmboos). Introduced n the 1930’s for erpsion control, they do their job arguably too well. 
    We are heading south to  Plainfield  for a family get together and will be gone all day, and I suspect we will see more signs of early fall as we travel.  It may be a stormy trip