Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Sycamore seedlings
If you cultivate your garden and are unlucky enough to have a sycamore tree nearby, this is the time of year when you find out what happens to all those twizzly little seeds that floated down in the autumn.
Every square foot of my garden is infested with the things. This doesn't matter much in the grass because they just get mown off in due course but any other patch where I want to plant something will look like this:
Every one of the twenty or so seedlings shown here will have to be uprooted. Over the whole garden there are literally thousands of these every year. Miss one for a few years and pulling it up becomes much more difficult.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I empathise, Dick. Do you find that mowing off their heads does for the little beggars? I get quite a few in and am always concerned to get the whole seedling including the tended white part right at the bottom of the root. If mowing kills them, all I need do then is the nip off the head.
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on
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I have never had a problem with tree seedlings in turf. I think that only the few plants that can grow completely flat will survive regular mowing, eg buttecups, dandelions, moss etc.
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Permalink Reply by Gordon T on
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When they're that size, just germinated with only the pair of seed leaves showing, beheading them with a strimmer is effective, at least as suggested on a couple of gardening forums out there.
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I suppose this would work OK when there is nothing nearby that I want to preserve. I tend to use my strimmer for less delicate tasks.
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My problem is day lilies, I love the bright berries giving colour through the winter the price to pay for this is hundreds of day lilies seeded all over the garden.
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My sycamore must be one of the the biggest in London so I share your pain....
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A fully grown sycamore can be impressive but I would say that (along with ash and other forest sized trees) its proper place is not in an urban garden. There are about forty spindly 60 foot high specimens along the railway embankment behind my garden. Not, of course, planted by some far sighted arborealist. They just grew there self-seeded, evidence of the neglect and indifference that characterise Network Rail's approach to the management of this wooded margin.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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There was a huge sycamore in the neighbouring garden until it was felled a few years ago due to disease. Every year uprooting the seedlings was a constant battle and you always missed some. They’re incredible tenacious - one took root in the asphalt on the flat roof. But my biggest bug bear was an ornamental Oxalis that had been planted by the previous owner of our house. Looks very pretty but spread everywhere. I think it took around 10 years of soil sieving to get rid of it.
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Permalink Reply by Rosamund Tomlins on
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Is this the kind of ornamental ivy that spreads its tendrils creeping across a whole lawn if it isn't caught in time? If so, I share the problem as it's a rare tenant that understands the importance of thorough garden maintenance (& clearly hardly ever cross the lawn as they'd be tripped up by it) & so every few years we have to go in & dig it all up again, as those roots are deep & have even survived a complete re-landscaping!
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It’s a perennial that has little bulbs it sprouts from. I think what you’re battling against is either ivy or the dreaded Bindweed (pic below) - it has soft heart shaped leaves and tendency to wander across even sun baked paving. Ivy has much firmer leaves
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Thanks, no it's more or less like your first pic but the leaves are slightly more like huge light green ivy. I wasn't there last year to remember the flowers. We dug it all up in January & February, but just fund endless tendrils, & long tough roots, no bulbs though. My brother has a bit of conservationists type gardening experience & knows bindweed when he sees it.
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