Ephemerals in the garden

I've written a couple of articles about Lesser Celandine, proper name Ranunculus ficaria:

...which is this little beastie, left.

It's a hellishly determined invader, it can ruin a lawn, it can smother a bed, and it's particularly evil because it spreads not only by seed, but by devious underground tubers which break off as soon as you try to dig the parent plant out, then lurk in the soil, waiting for you to go away - at which point they immediately start to grow into new plants.

I had a comment arrive from that article, the other day, which said:-

"Well ... spring. Hey actually are ephemerals, albeit obnoxious ones."

Not one of the most articulate comments I have received,  but they have made a big mistake if they think that Lesser Celandine is an ephemeral.

Time for a quick lecture on botanical "lifestyles" . 

Most garden plants fall into three categories: Woody Perennials, Herbaceous Perennials, and Annuals.

"Perennial" means that it comes back, year after year: 

Woody Perennials are big things like trees, and smaller things such as shrubs, which may or may not lose their leaves, but which have a permanent framework of stems and branches. You can see them all year round.

Herbaceous Perennials come back year after year, but the top growth dies off to nothing, usually over the winter.

Annuals grow from seed, live for just one year, flower and set seed, then die. They carry out their whole life cycle in one year.

This is a simplification, of course: there are many in-betweenies such as sub-shrubs: some woody perennials will die off in a cold winter:  there are plants which technically are perennials, but which we treat as annuals because they grow better if started off fresh each year - a lot of our garden vegetables come into that category.  In addition, some tender plants which we grow as annuals will sometimes, in a mild winter, make it through to the next year, because technically they are perennials. 

And then there are oddities like Biennials, which take two years to grow to flowering size, then flower, set seed and die. So they're no perennials, nor are they annuals.

Oh, and I should mention things like bulbs - familiar flowers such as Daffodils, Snowdrops, Crocus etc - are technically herbaceous perennials, because they come back year after year, having lost their top growth completely: but you will sometimes see them labelled as Spring Annuals. 

So, as with most botany, it's not a black-and-white world, there are many subtleties and distinctions between the groupings.

So where do Ephemerals come into it, and why are Lesser Celandine not ephemerals?

Ephemerals is the name for a group of weeds plants who can carry out their entire life cycle - seed, growth, flowering, setting seed and dying - more than once in a year, and usually over a very short period. 

Good examples of Ephemerals are Chickweed (Stellaria media), Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) and most of the Speedwells (Veronica) as these weeds pop up, flower, and disappear within just a couple of weeks. This allows them to spread incredibly fast, and to take over a garden in no time at all. But at least they are easy to weed out, being very shallow-rooted: they don't have deep tap-roots like Dandelions, nor do they have a strong mat of fibrous roots, like Creeping Buttercup. Or Lesser Celandine.

The problem with the ephemerals is that, because they set seed so fast, if you let the first few get away with it, you will find your garden will be full of them for the rest of the season!
 

So why did this anonymous commenter think that Lesser Celandine is an ephemeral?  

Whoever they are, they are not alone in making this mistake, because the internet is full of sites which describe Lesser Celandine as a "spring ephemeral". Many of these sites also describe the plant as disappearing later in the year, which is simply not true: the rosettes of shiny leaves remain in the beds and lawns quite happily through most of the year: over winter the foliage disappears, as does that of all the other herbaceous perennials: and then in spring the same individual plants pop up new leaves and get on with flowering again. 

You can see this for yourself, because individual plants get bigger and bigger over time,  if you don't week them out.

The confusion comes from mis-interpreting the term "ephemeral" to mean "only flowering for a short time" whereas it should mean "completing its life cycle in a short time" ie growing from seed, flowering, and dying.

If you interpret "ephemeral" to mean "only flowering for a short time" then most of the plants in the garden are ephemeral!

Does it really matter, if we call Lesser Celandine a perennial, or an ephemeral? Well, not, not really, I suppose: but it does make a difference to how we, the gardener, treat them. Ephemerals can be simply hoed out, on a dry day: slice through their flimsy stems, and they are dead and gone.

Try hoeing Lesser Celandine, and you will get absolutely nowhere!

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