Devil’s Claw Plant

A weed for most people is defined as a plant that is growing where you don’t want it to grow.  I have volunteer tomatoes, basil, borage and other edible plants that I pull as weeds because they are growing where I don’t want them to grow. For example, blights in the tomato plants I am choosing to grow can be caused from infected volunteer plants.  I pull them.  I don’t let them grow.  They spread like crazy. They are weeds to me.

And then there are other weeds.  Some I try to never let grow.  Such as poison ivy.  Until this year that is the way I have felt about Devil’s Claw.

Plato posing with Devil's Claw plant 

I pictured this plant in a previous post.  I said that maybe I would let this one grow so that I could show it to you on my blog.  So here’s today’s view.  In the previous post’s picture this plant was about 3 foot in diameter and maybe a foot or so tall.  Today the plant is more than 9 feet in diameter and almost 3 feet tall and growing fast.   I said before and I will say again. This is only July. It may grow to be more than 20 feet in diameter if I let it.  I’m letting it grow for now.  We’ll see.

It does have pretty flowers.  And really, it is a cool looking plant.   I’m assuming it’s in the squash family because that’s what it looks like to me.   I may be wrong.  (edit on July 31st, 2014:  A friend of mine who is a professional Naturalist informed me today that Devil's Claw is in the unicorn plant family.  I stand corrected)

Way back in either 1977 or maybe ’78, I had a young friend (of course, I was young then, too) came to visit and stayed for a month or so.  He was studying entomology at Cornell. He got real excited when he saw the Devil’s Claw plant in my garden.  I said, “It’s a weed.”  He said, “It’s an endangered weed.  They’re rare”  OK. . . so I let that one plant grow that year.  It got huge. It was every bit of 20 foot in diameter and maybe 30 foot.  What was funny was that when he went back to Cornell and told people there about the plant it turned out there were a bunch of people who got excited about the weed in my garden.  Three or four times that summer a group of two to four people would fly to Kansas City from Cornell, rent a car and drive out to my place to see the endangered weed.  They all took pictures and carried on about how excited they were to see it.  For me, of course, it was always a good party for a couple of days while each group was here.  People, who all ended up with impressive careers in Botany, Biology, etc.  It was great fun.

Here you can see the green seed pods forming.  The plant that I let grow some 35 years ago produced enormous numbers of these seed pods with bagillions of seeds.  Every year I pull 10’s  of newly germinated devil’s claw plants out of my garden.   That’s why I may not let the plant this year grow too much longer.  I want it to produce mature dried seed pods so that I can show them to you.  But as soon as that happens, I will probably pull and burn the plant.  There will still be plenty of seeds in the ground from past years to take its place next year, I’m sure.  I'm also sure that I will pull them all.

One of the things that is funny about the folks coming out from Cornell just to see the plant in my garden, is that the following year I drove out to western Kansas and saw vast fields of the durn plants.  Acres and acres.  How could this be an endangered plant?  They fight it like a noxious weed out there in some areas of western Kansas.  However, other people do look at it as a medicinal plant.   My understanding is that they use the roots and tubers.  I guess I'll find out what those look like when I pull it.   Let me know if you are interested in purchasing a natural medicine and, maybe, I'll let it keep growing.  haha,  Maybe.

Anyway, it sure was fun meeting those folks those many years ago.  And I'm glad I'm getting a chance to show this plant to you this year.  That's fun, too.

Garden update:

Tomatoes are finally starting to ripen.  Finally!  I have been picking a few pounds of cherry tomatoes each week these last few weeks but now they are really starting to come on.

And luckily, the slicers are starting to ripen, too.  Finally! Soon they will be many.  It's about time.