Consider-the-Lilies Web Gallery
Hairy Bittercress
An immigrant turf-weed, this plant gives the appearance of fragility, with its tiny, delicate florets displayed at the end of slender stalks. But, as is true of many of our nonnative flora and fauna, appearances can be deceiving.
My first clue that this was the case came when I found it flourishing in hard-pan clay next to a gravel driveway. I later learned that after entering North America, it has managed to establish itself completely across the more temperate areas of the continent.
How? See below...
The tiny, porcelain-white blossoms of Cardamine hirsuta begin to decorate the edges of my yard in the Shenandoah Valley in mid-February.
As it is with most of the new "lilies" I'm been blessed to learn about in this venture, it was the tiny blossoms that first drew my attention to Hairy Bittercress.
And, as also often happens, I learned that beyond finding a new lily, I had found another wildflower that propagates itself in a special way.
In fact, Cardamine hirsuta is one of the most unusual in the latter category, because it spreads its seed by "explosive propagation." Indeed, this tiny weed, exceeds the range of much larger plants and could be said to boast of magnum-power propagation. This is probably why the plant is called Snapweed in some parts of the country.
I've circled one of the specialized seed capsules, that, similar to those of the Touch-me-not, propel the seed as far as ten feet from the parent plant!
(Another wildflower with this same, but lower powered, method of explosive seed dispersion is Wild Geranium.)
I've made a rough calculation, assuming a seed capsule diameter of 1/16", and found that ten feet is roughly 2000 times this diameter away from the mother plant!
And, combine this with the capacity to sink roots in just about any kind of soil, and I think we can see how Cardamine hirsuta has crossed the continent.
What elegance we are privileged to observe in this seemingly insignificant, ephemeral turf-weed!
But isn't that what Jesus said about His "lilies of the field?"
Go to the Main Directory to consider more lilies of the field.