Get Wild: Guilty as sown

Every noxious weed season has its usual suspects: false chamomile (a.k.a the crazy daisy) and musk thistle. And each year has a deadline. Detective Frost is already on her way up the valley. Once she arrives, the investigation shuts down cold — no appeals, no plea deals and no exceptions for good behavior. Suspect one: False chamomile, the impersonator: Small white flowers, feathery leaves, wearing the name 'chamomile' like a stolen badge. Crush leaves and there's a big tell: no scent. Real chamomile spent centuries calming skin and stomachs in teas and lotions. This impostor does the exact opposite silent-but-violent: deer and elk graze on it ending up with blistered mouths and tongues. Wildlife catches on fast and steers clear, leaving whole hillsides quietly abandoned. A single plant can drop 300,000 seeds in a season. Consider this your permission slip. You don't need a county escort or a scheduled pull. See the impostor on your property, put on a glove, and go. Gloves or boots are best to kick or pull it out by the root, bag flower heads, and get them in the trash. Do-not-mow or deadhead-it. Cut-off its head, and it grows two more. This is not a hydra metaphor. It is how the plant works. Sniff. Sniff. Dig. Suspect Two: Musk thistle, the sleeper agent. Purple flowers that nod like they've got nothing to hide. This one smells like guilt, wafting a sweet, musky perfume. Apparently even outlaws want to smell nice for their mugshot. Overpowering and invasive, the real crime is underground: a robust plant can throw a hundred or more flower heads in a season, each one capable of dropping 1,200 to 1,500 seeds. If you're already on this scene, watch for an opportunity to de-head a Musk Thistle before it opens, that whole batch never sees soil. Catch it before Labor Day, and the seed bank stops instead of spreading for another decade. Same permission applies here, with one extra tool: a shovel or hoe, sunk a couple inches below the crown to sever the taproot clean. Musk thistle and false chamomile share one weakness. Both reproduce only by seed, no rhizomes, no runners. Neither has a backup plan. Stop the seed and the whole operation folds. Root it out, dig deep. The lineup: innocent bystanders. Not everything white or purple deserves a mugshot. True chamomile, the kind that ends up in tea, smells sweetly of apple. Native thistles carry smooth, wine-red stems instead of spiny green ones, and mean pollinators no harm. Deescalate upon sighting. And take caution. In some cases, you may need reinforcements. Phone for backup before you take aim, if you encounter these two edgy look-a-like characters – names: Yellow Toadflax and Oxeye Daisy. Both spread through underground roots as well as seed, so pulling or cutting can backfire and trigger more aggressive regrowth instead of stopping it. Given enough seasons, an untreated patch does not share a hillside. It replaces one. These two need herbicide or a biological control agent, so any sighting is a tip worth reporting rather than a case to close alone. Bonus round: who's on first? Frost works fast: a thin white fingerprint one September morning, then a hard, ground-locking freeze shuts the case. She doesn't take bribes, requests, or extensions. Every noxious weed pulled root, and all, is a point on our landscape's board. Extra credit for clearing a whole patch before first snow. Here's the incident report: pull usual suspects and what's left behind is native, resilient, and pollinator friendly wildflowers. No badge required. A glove, a trowel, and 20 minutes on a Saturday puts a dent in the case. For more on identifying noxious weeds or the Weed Control Cost Share Program, contact Summit County Weed Control at 970-668-4218. For more pics and information, visit SummitCountyCo.gov/weeds Christy Camp is a volunteer wilderness ranger with Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance, and a volunteer with Blue River Watershed Group, a council member for the town of Keystone, and an advisory council member for Project Learning Tree.