ranchmagazine.com

By Jake Landers
Published July 2012

A thumbnail sketch of Buffalo Burr would include: stickers all over leaf, stem, and fruit; long-lived seed, annual roots, responds to soil disturbance, and largely inedible for man and beast.

Buffalo Burr (Solanum rostratum) is a member of the Potato Family, many of which are poisonous to humans and grazing animals. Our familiar Irish Potato occasionally is green in the outer layer of the tuber that contains solanine, a poison thought to cause spina-bifida in babies when overconsumed by pregnant women in Britain.

There are no tubers or other food storage roots in Buffalo Burr. It must grow each time from seed which can last many years in the soil. Perhaps soil disturbance, as in a Buffalo wallow, brings seeds to the surface where they can germinate. Another name is Kansas thistle.

By Jake Landers
Published June 2012

Sunflowers come in two main groups, those that must come up from seed each time they grow, Annuals, and those that can come back from roots as well as growing from seeds, Perennials. The annuals are the weedy ones that are pests in crops and pastures yet they provide the seeds for humans and birds to eat and have been developed into many varieties of colorful flowers. The perennials, mainly only two, provide the tubers of Jerusalem artichoke or Sunchoke, a few seeds for birds, and grazing for livestock and wildlife.

By Jake Landers
Published May 2012

Where environmental gradients are abrupt, plant species tend to adjust to the part of the gradient where they can dominate, or, at least, survive.  Water levels around a lake or along a river, geological deposits, animal activity, and many other situations, may produce striking patterns.  Fence line contrasts between two pastures, or along a pasture and the highway right-of-way, often show two different groups of plants because of different growing environments.  Plants species around a Harvester Ant mound in West Texas can change over a distance of inches forming narrow bands or rings. 

By Jake Landers
Published April 2012

Few people recognize Chittamwood.  I once tried to identify a tree by telephone for a rancher.   He said it was thorny and had rusty red bark where cattle had rubbed against it.  By a process of elimination I suggested it might be Chittamwood, and when I saw it a few weeks later while working on a poisonous plant problem on his ranch, I found out I had guessed correctly.

Chittamwood is a small size tree that can form thickets several hundred feet across.  The bark of young Chittamwood is a smooth grey, or a splotchy grey before it takes on the thin cracking and reddish brown bark of old age.  Rubbing off the outer layer reveals a rusty red layer beneath, often seen where deer have rubbed their antlers, probably one of the most preferred trees for this activity.