OMG--Dodder!!!

Traveling 'string'

The dry hills of California are covered with this evil stuff; it seems to occur everywhere--but not here, high in the mountains of New Mexico, at least not until now. Wandering around amazed at the new growth stimulated by the tremendous rain we've have in the last few weeks, we stumbled over a patch of yellow silly string, and I really did gasp in horror, "Oh my god!" (I didn't have the good sense to get a pic of that original mass.)

Difficult to spot till the growth is really spread out, I don't know how bad the infestation is. The "strings" are fine, and travel looking for victims. The stuff I've seen other places is bright orange, but ours' is yellow. When the dodder finds its vic, it infiltrates the plant, then draws all its sustenance from it, eventually killing the plant. There is no treatment; both dodder and host must be destroyed. Given the number of fruit trees I have, that is too terrible to contemplate!

dodder flowers

Recommended treatment includes burning out, or spraying with herbicide. By the time we spotted the dodder, it was already flowering, hence SEED. So we opted to burn hoping that would destroy the seed as well as the mature plant, and infected hosts. We'll keep checking to make sure the original dozen or so sites are clear. Any remaining plant material, I'll try to rake (inward), and bag for the trash.

The burn...

Gardens Alive has a concise article about dodder--http://www.gardensalive.com/article.asp?ai=1115. There is a lot of other material online, too.

The UC Davis site is very thorough including preferred hosts, "Dodder species vary in the number of different host species they can infect. Some, such as C. salina, are in rather restricted sites such as salty marshes, flats, and ponds on just a few host plant species.

Scorched earth policy...

Others, such as C. pentagona (C. campestris in some publications), are found on many crop and weed species including alfalfa, asparagus, melons, safflower, sugarbeet, tomato, field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis), lambsquarters (Chenopodium album), and pigweed (Amaranthus species). C. indecora, also has a wide host range that includes alfalfa and weeds such as field bindweed, five-hook bassia (Bassia hyssopifolia), lambsquarters, and Russian thistle (Salsola tragus)."

All of our spots had either pigweed or purslane. If you don't recognize these, keep checking back. I'll be posting a lot of pics of the weeds that have exploded in the last few weeks. All those seeds were just laying dormant in the soil till enough moisture occurred!

The last photo on the right shows the worst site--10 to 15 feet wide, running sporadically down the hill for about 30 feet. We'll be doing a wider inspection over the next days; we only checked and treated about five acres--95 more to go!