A Landmark Weed

Day 326: They say that desperate times call for desperate measures, and so it was that I pulled Hitchcock off the shelf after an hour of browsing through pretty pictures of plants in the hope of getting lucky. I had a problem. The cause of my consternation was a weed, and therefore unlikely to appear in any field guide with "wildflower" in the title. Nor could I find it in any of my customary sources for descriptions of invasives; therefore it was probably a "weed of no concern" despite its abundance on an island in the middle of the Tilton River. As such, it had issued a challenge in the character of its three-fingered glove, and the geas was upon me to name it. There was no other option but Hitchcock in such a desperate time.

Now you might be wondering at my hesitance to dive into a dichotomous key. I am ashamed to admit that my past experience with keying out species runs rather backwards to the recommended procedure, working in reverse from a point where I can say, "Well, it can't be that." In this case, I had no such point of reference. The only thing I could say for certain about the mystery weed was that it belonged to the Fabaceae, the family of peas. That signature was in the morphology of its flower and in its distinctive leaf arrangement. I opened Hitchcock to "Fabaceae" and settled in for the siege. Fortunately, my photos had captured all the necessary details, and within a substantially shorter time than I'd expected, I had identified Melilotus albus, aka "white sweet-clover." I was so proud of myself that I immediately shot an email off to Arnie to let him know that Hitchcock and I had finally made friends with each other. Arnie's congratulation came with a qualifier of which I am equally proud: "Now you're a real botanist." Inspired by a weed! Whodathunkit?