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‘A Trip Through My Life’
by Common Ragwort (senecio jacobaea)
July 2000
My parent is a wonderful specimen of ragwort, towering 120cm tall through a boundary fence in fertile Lincolnshire Fen soil. Flies, bees, butterflies, moths, a never ending stream of insects flock to the flowers seeking the nectar and pollen. Many bring pollen sticking on their legs from the last ragwort plant they visited. A grain of pollen sticks to the pin of my tiny flower, softens and grows down into the embryonic seed that is to become me. Within a week of being fertilised, I have formed into a fully grown seed, two more weeks and all the other seeds in my flower head have been fertilised and the flower head cuts off any more food to the 80 or so seeds that now sit in the seed head fully formed, our downey tops tightly packed, waiting only to dry out and for a strong wind.
August 2000
My parent is still flowering strongly and I as yet have not left home. I must wait until my parent has finished flowering and the strong stems holding me high in the air dry out. That will let my seed head dry out and we can fly on the wind.
October 2000
It’s been a long Summer. Parent still flowering. I’m still waiting, along with nearly 300,000 other seeds for our parent to let us go.
December 2000
Frost has eventually ended my parents flowering spree, but before I could dry out and fly away, it started to rain and hasn’t stopped for weeks now.
March 2001
At last, dry windy weather is blowing us out of the seed heads. Some will blow for hundreds of miles. Some will never break free from the seed head and will only reach the soil when the parent eventually decays and blows to the ground. My turn comes and my wing opens. The wind catches at me and pulls me from the seed head. I only fly a few hundred metres before being caught in an old cobweb in a hedgerow.
April 2001
Heavy rain has washed me onto the mossy covering at the base of the hedge. It’s warm and moist, but something is stopping me from germinating.
May 2001
It has rained for several weeks now. Every time it rained, I could feel the urge to germinate increase as the chemical inside me that was stopping me from germinating was slowly washed away. But still something is missing.
June 2001
Sunshine! Shining through my seedcase onto my two seed leaves. As the light soaks through, I start to build up chlorophyll and make food. Within four days I have made enough food to grow my tiny root down through the moss into the moist soil, but I’m starting to loose the battle for the sunlight. Although I’m on the sunny side of the hedgerow, other plants, in particular the grass, are growing so fast they are blocking out the sunlight.
July 2001
Something ate the plants above me and has let some light through. Using the sunlight, I quickly make some sugars and use it to extend the stem holding my little seed leaves. My seed leaves are only 2cm across but I manage to extend the leaf stems by 15cm and get the leaves into the sun. Now I can use the sunlight, I must keep growing the stems in order to keep in the sun. I have some sugar to spare, so some goes down to my roots to dig deeper and find more water, the rest goes into making a new leaf which is soon up in the sunlight with the other two.
August 2001
Something came and ate the plants again, and this time it ate one of my leaves. They didn’t notice it as it was only small and the bitter taste that I have made to protect me from being eaten was swamped by the taste of all the other plants. Still, it has let more light in and I quickly make three more leaves, one after the other, sending them up through the grass and plants to the sunlight. My leaves are bigger now, nearly 4cm across and the extra sugar I make is sent down to build more roots and to start to build my crown. I need the extra roots now because the hedgerow is taking all the water from the top of the soil and my roots must go deeper.
September 2001
Something ate all the plants again together with half of my leaves. It tasted my bitterness too late, it had already bitten off my leaves and spat them out. But even my dead leaves will help protect me from the grazing animals. In two days when the bitten off leaves have dried out, their bitterness will have gone, but the poison I make will still be there. When the animals come back, they will eat the dry leaf and it will start to poison them. Eventually they will die and leave me alone.
December 2001
The weather is cold now and the animals have grazed all the plants around me very short. Consequently, I am now getting much more sunlight and do not have to make my leaves long to reach the light. I now have seven round leaves on short stems arranged in a rosette around my crown. All the sugar I make is sent down into my roots and crown.
March 2002
The winter was harsh and my leaves got frost bite and died off, then I was flooded and stayed underwater for two weeks, but that’s all gone now. It’s a bit warmer and I have used some of my food stores to grow a new rosette of leaves. My leaves are now much better at catching the light, they are long, serrated and crinkly, and I can now make a lot more sugar to store in my crown and roots.
May 2002
It’s much warmer now, the stronger sunlight, warmth and frequent rain showers has prompted all the other plants around me to start growing quickly. But I have a head start on them this year, using my sugar reserves and the extra sugar made by my new leaves, I quickly grow a whole load more crinkly rosette leaves. They block out the light and stop plants from growing underneath them. I press them down on the ground to smother plants before they get a chance to smother me and steal my sunlight.
July 2002
I won the fight for sunlight. My smothering rosette of leaves stopped everything from growing underneath them. Some of my leaves died from lack of light, so I sucked all the nutrients out of them and cast them off. The worms quickly tugged them down into the soil and I can taste the extra fertility that is building up from their efforts. Slugs and stripy snails graze a little on my leaves, but I am growing much faster than they eat. Even the big animals are leaving me alone now that they can easily detect me by my strong acrid smell. They do not know that I can kill them, they just do not like the smell and taste of my leaves.
August 2002
Something trod on me today and broke off a whole load of my leaves. I have a lot of sugar stored in my crown now so I quickly grow new leaves to repair the damage. If this sort of damage were to happen very often, it would sap my valuable reserves. Luckily, the poisons in the leaves will slowly start to kill the animals when they eat them dried. Then they will be gone and won’t tread on me anymore.
October 2002
It has been a wonderful summer and my rosette of leaves is over 25cm across. I have made lots of sugar from the sunshine and stored it all safely away in my thick roots and in my crown. My roots reach out for many metres and my crown is over 2cm thick. Each time one of my lower leaves was cast off, it left a little eye bud on my crown. I feel I will use these next year. The worms have been very busy eating my discarded leaves and the mole has made a visit or two to hunt for them. Little does he know that my poisons don’t work on my allies, the worms, but each time he eats one of my worms, he gets a bit more sick. Maybe he will die soon and leave my worms alone. Oh yes, and a Vine Weevil grub is eating one of my thick roots and I do not have any way of stopping it.
December 2002
It’s really cold and wet. Most of the plants around me have died back. The big animals are eating those plants very short and right up to me, but they are leaving me alone.
April 2003
The rain is warm, the sun is strong. I am making loads of sugar for my crown, but I am starting to feel very different. I feel like I don’t want to store the sugar anymore. I feel like I must grow tall. All the sugar I can make in my leaves, and all the food I have stored away in my roots and crown is fed into the eye at the top of my crown. Instead of making more rosette leaves, I start to make a stem.
June 2003
With all my stored food, I had a great advantage over the other plants. I am now TALL. I tower over the other plants. I have a thick centre stem with five strong side stems, all covered in big leaves to soak up the sunshine. My deep roots easily supply all the water I need. I am now making a whole load of sugar, and its all going to form a great crest of flower heads covering my branches. Some small red and black moths have laid eggs on some of my leaves.
July 2003
I BLOSSOM. It’s very hot and dry, but my roots pump up all the water I need from deep below ground. I send some of the sugar I make in my leaves down into the fine network of roots in the fertile soil. I push the sugar out through my roots to feed the bacteria in the soil. The bacteria eat my sugary gift and use it to chew up the rocks, releasing a valuable feed of nutrients and minerals which my fine root hairs quickly soak up. I need lots of nutrients to build my flowers.
STOP. Something is very wrong!! Those eggs hatched and the caterpillars are eating my flowers. As the caterpillars grow, they eat my flowers even faster than I can make them. Spiders have started to eat the caterpillars, but not fast enough - soon I will be dead.
I’m not dead. A machine went by in the next field putting a cold spray onto the plants. The spray drifted onto me and all the caterpillars have died. Using the last of my energy stores I activate the eyes in my crown and send up a whole bunch of new stems, leaves and flowers.
August 2003
That was close. Another moth laid some eggs on me, but there were not as many and the spiders ate nearly all of the caterpillars before they could eat too much of me. I now have a dozen strong stems and stand over a metre tall. My stems branch and branch again and are topped with masses of bright yellow flowers. I make plenty of nectar for the insects to attract them to pollinate my flowers. So many insects come that spiders find my flowers to be a good place to hunt. The crab spider hides behind my flowers then springs out to catch flies, bees and butterflies. At night the pearl spiders hunt for the moths that visit in the dark. The worms and snails dine on my discarded leaves and even the ants like me. The ants have built an ant hill around my stems and are busy putting out their aphids on my leaves. The ants are good farmers and tend their aphids well, they attack and bite anything that threatens their charges, including the ladybirds, constantly on the lookout for a juicy greenfly. I feel like a battleground.
October 2003
I have drained the water from the ground, soaked up the sun and made nearly 3000 flowers. Bees, butterflies, moths, flies and beetles have visited to drink my nectar rewards, and have obligingly brought pollen from other ragwort plants to pollinate my seeds. Nearly 250,000 seeds to send on their way to carry my genes into the surrounding land.
November 2003
I’m nearly dead. All my stems are withered and dry. Many of my seeds have already blown away on the wind. With the remaining energy left in my roots, I send up some root shoots. Six little seedling like plants that will get a head start. Boosted by my remaining food stores, they quickly form small rosettes and take charge of the bare soil left after my year of oppressive shading when I was a rosette plant.
December 2003
The frost comes and I die. Most of my seeds are still in the seed heads. My strong woody stem will keep them high in the air to ensure that most will catch the wind and blow for miles. Some around the edges of the seed heads will be trapped in place and will have to wait until my stems rot and collapse to the ground before they will have a chance to grow.
Most of my seeds will not have a chance to grow. They will fall on water, into the sea, on roads, onto cultivated land where they will be ploughed in before they have a chance to flower. Some will be buried and without the sunlight will eventually rot away. But my seeds are so many that some will find a place to grow. Some that are buried for years will be brought back to the surface by ants, worms, moles and other means and will carry on my work. Soon my kind will grow everywhere, and our poisons will kill off all the animals that eat or damage us. Soon. After all our motto is:- SEED EVERYWHERE - GROW ANYWHERE - and I have done my bit!
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