#catchweed

Plant: Catchweed

Type: Herb

Fuzzy green balls with long, tall stems

Location: Hedges and low growing herbs, needs moist soil

How to Use: Are laced around poultices or wrapped over them

They have adorable flowers and some people also call them sticky willy which is so silly.

Also their seeds look like little testicles. I'm in love with this plant.

I am but one person with too little time and too many hyperfixations and even though my yard is actually kinda small it ends up taking on a life of its own because hey let nature do its thing, right? What’s the worst that could happen?

*sigh*

So, right now, the very back of my yard is a mini-forest of hackberry, elm, and soapberry saplings about chest high (so thick you can’t walk through them without cutting them down, it’s a situation). Behind those, there’s this tangled mass of common hedge parsley and catchweed bedstraw. Both of these plants are terrible. The catchweed is essentially nature’s velcro and it tears into your skin as a bonus. The parsley is fine until is goes to seed—I have clothes I can’t wear until I sit down for a few hours and pick all the burr-covered parsley seeds off them. No, they don’t come off in the wash.

The back of the yard is the worst, but the catchweed and the parsley are all over my entire yard (along with the invasive rescue brome grass I can’t get rid of). I’ve been picking as much of it as I can every time I go outside. I want to destroy ALL OF IT!!!

Except... uh... today while I was watering my trees... uh...

Sorry for the grainy quality, I was far away. But... uh... Swallowtail Butterfly host plants include... plants in the... carrot family...

You know, like... parsley? She laid several eggs while I watched, and I found three total. I know there’s gotta be more. Well, I guess that’s one host plant I’m not going to run out of... and I’ve never raised swallowtails before!!!

So I put the plants with the eggs inside, and went back to watering. Okay, maybe I don’t hate parsely as much. But I still hate catchweed. GRRR!!!

Oh! Hello Mexican Honey Wasp friend! What are you doing over here?

Wait... are you...

Nectaring on...

Catchweed?!

I watched this wasp, and... yes. The only flowers that seemed to interest her were these tiny catchweed flowers.

Well. I guess I’m not pulling out all of the parsley and catchweed. As if I’d have been able to in the first place.

Just goes to show how even “weeds” are essential components of any ecosystem. My current situation is just a gross imbalance of three particular species.

Deadly Gardens: Catchweed This installment of the Deadly Gardens-series clocks in at 5 pages, 1 page front cover, 1/2 a page SRD/editorial, leaving us with 3.5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!   We begin this installment of Deadly Gardens with the twigman fetish, which can generate a wooden construct, which then may be directed by the user to attack and otherwise idles. I like this item…

Hm.

I know that Arnica can help heal broken bones, but I’m not quite sure....

Maybe make an Arnica poultice, and wrap it in cobweb mixed catchweed?