Once upon a time, someone got the bright idea to plant a bunch of bamboo as a hedgerow between our house and the one next door. When done it probably looked like a good idea. The problem is that over time, the bamboo takes over EVERYTHING because its roots propogate the plant(s) into a persistent monster plant.
So, ever since we bought the place we’ve been fighting it by cutting it back continually. We seem to be winning the battle as this year we don’t have much of it along our driveway (its last stand), leaving a sort of grassless, bamboo-less area.
What’s happened, though is a big surprise. We’ve got a “field” of tiny strawberry plants. There are hundreds of them, most less than two inches high and sporting 3 distinct leaves. Normally we’d be mowing and/or planting something but I’m going to let things go to see what happens. I don’t think that these plants are going to get much taller and I could find only a couple flowers. But I did find one plant that had two microscopic strawberries. They even tasted like strawberries, though you’d need a couple hundred of them to make a handful. I had to draw the little guy. Full size this plant measure just over 1″ high.
Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6 softcover), Micron 01.
What??! How did strawberries appear from bamboo??!!
I think the relationship between bamboo and strawberries is more like “We chopped down all the trees and look, we’ve got Seattle” (grin). Chantal grew up in this old house and mentions previous existence of wild strawberries in the yard. I’ve occasionally found one tucked under a shrub. All that’s happened is that my weedwhacker has eliminated the bamboo, opening up a piece of land for the strawberries.
I really don’t know what will become of it. It’s not an unattractive ground cover but unless the plants get a lot bigger, I don’t think our fruit crop will be much. 🙂
Wow only one inch tall . That’s so interesting and quite a fun find.
We leave a lot of natural growth in our yard and we have many milkweed, liliies, daisies ,and other plants throughout the spring and summer that come up. It’s always interesting to see what will grow in those areas. I love post and sketches like this
I wish we had more. We have very little grass these days but Chantal is heavily influenced by UK gardener videos and so most of our area is covered with flower gardens.