The container grown Potato Dandelions, Krigia dandelion, are
growing so rapidly that their image changes daily. As long as I employ methods to exclude
predators from the container, the plants flourish. The abundance of leaves provides energy for
the production of flowers and underground tubers. A single plant may produce a dozen or more
tubers during the spring growing season.
At this rate of reproduction, it doesn’t take long to build up a large
population.
I thought this would be a good time to check on the progress
of Potato Dandelion plants growing from tubers planted last fall into this
ridgetop site. This most closely matches
the site of the original Blue Jay Barrens population of the rare Potato
Dandelion.
A combination of wind and rainfall runoff patterns create
patches of bare ground in this area.
Plants growing in these bare spots receive enough sunlight to stimulate
production of flowers.
Some of the plants are looking quite healthy. All of this growth has arisen from a single bean
sized tuber.
Other plants have suffered damage from foraging Wild
Turkeys. Turkeys also create patches of
bare ground, but at a cost to the plants.
I originally planted some tubers at the base of this
cedar. Turkeys chose this location as a
place to take dust baths, and created two large wallows. What once looked similar to the area in the
right foreground, is now devoid of plants.
Potato Dandelions at the original site struggle to put their
leaves up through the leaf litter.
The extra effort necessary to push leaves up through the
leaf litter is enough to cause these plants to fail to flower. I will occasionally clear the fallen leaves
from a small area and allow the plants to produce flowers. It’s nice to see the plants bloom, but since
the flowers don’t seem to produce any viable seed, the activity give little
benefit to the population as a whole.
The non-flowering plants still produce many new tubers, so the
population continues to expand.
There may be other populations of the plant at Blue Jay
Barrens, but there is only a narrow window in the spring when the plants are easy
to see and finding them is complicated by the presence of the White Trout Lily,
Erythronium albidum.
White Trout Lily is probably the most abundant woodland
spring flower growing in the uplands at Blue Jay Barrens. The shape and color pattern of the young
Trout Lily leaf is remarkably similar to that of the Potato Dandelion. That’s the Trout Lily on the right. With hundreds of Trout Lily leaves in view at
any one time, it’s easy to see how a random Potato Dandelion leaf could escape
notice.
As long as my container grown plants continue to produce
plenty of tubers, I will transplant the excess into suitable locations. It doesn’t look like I’m in danger of having
a shortage.
