Oxalis and gophers

Chad Schroter Chad.Schroter@sandisk.com
Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:03:32 PST
Mike,   
   It may be that the rate of reproduction exceeds that of predation...
but I currently have in the ground:
bowiei, hirta (2nd year), obtusa, purpurea, incarnata, rubra and triangularis. Also glabra in a gopher cage. I have several others (thanks BX) in pots which I am tempted to stick in the ground as well. One issue is that once I do this things get mixed together and I lose the ID's etc...

Some of my ID may be suspect, but the pink rubra (rhizomes), bowiei and triangularis have been ignored - tunnels right through them. O. incarnata (I'm guessing) has stem bulbils and walks out of pots and spreads badly - but it stays "low" so its OK for now, especially compared to pes caprae. I have not seen evidence of gophers actually eating O. pes caprae - no cut stems etc. but they sure like to collect the bulbs for later...

We have always had cats (Pudge currently has been catching squirrels) and I have not detected any plant damage I could attribute to above ground rodents..

Chad
 

-----Original Message-----
From: pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Michael Mace
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 1:17 PM
To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [pbs] Oxalis and gophers

Chad wrote:

>> I want to try the well behaved ones in the garden as much as possible
since they appear to be gopher safe.

Please let us know how that works out.  I tried a number of different O.
obtusa in the garden, and they were eaten aggressively by some rodent.  It
may have been mice -- I eventually had to put chicken wire in my pots to
protect them.

Mike
San Jose, CA




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