Urban Habitat Diversity
Urban landscapes and habitats are very diverse. They include residential areas with
lawns and gardens; city streets; vacant lots; businesses; anywhere actually that people
live. And all the spaces inbetween. Weeds do very well in these habitats, especially those
that aren't managed.
Here is a managed urban habitat. It's cemetery in Fergus, Ontario. If you look closely at
the tree in the center you will see the damage done by lightening (long strip of bark
removed). Any weeds in this local site would be fried. The noise woke me up next door.
Notice the tall weed in the center of the picture (below) with numerous seed capsules. It is right in front of this home's front picture window. Every day as I walked to grad school at Michigan State University I would wonder what these East Lansing residents were thinking when they gazed out their front window.
??Question??:
What weed species is this?
Would you define it as a weed?
Do the people in this house define it as a weed?
Below is another residential yard, in this case it is a farmhouse and lawn in the cool highlands above Lake Ontario, near Elora, Ontario, Canada. Can you guess what the strange pattern is in this lawn, and what caused it?
The spaces between urban areas often are not managed. Below is a very large and healthy common sunflower plant in flower next to a railroad, also near a shed. Normally railroads are very vigorous in controlling weeds in their right-of-ways. Sometimes they use so much residual herbicide they select for resistant weeds. The first recorded case of triazine resistant weeds was a kochia population found along a railroad right-of-way.
