My New "Friend" Gumweed
/
I’ve now relocated my Fell Pony herd twice during my stewardship of the breed, and each of the three locations we’ve lived together have had tremendous good characteristics as well as occasional challenges. It took my ponies less than a week to find the challenge in our current location.
When I visited here prior to relocating the ponies, I saw what I thought were burrs in the horse pasture. I was immediately transported back in time. At our first location, Turkey Trot Springs, I put my stallion and mare into a new pasture I had fenced, and when I went to fetch them a few hours later, Midnight had completely filled his forelock with burrs from burdock plants. I of course never pastured my Fells in that pasture again!
Willowtrail Wild Rose and her ‘horn’ after I worked briefly to remove gumweed from her forelock
Here my new ‘friend’ is called gumweed. It took the ponies several days to find it, and I was hopeful during that period that I had been wrong about seeing burrs in the pasture. And technically gumweed isn’t a burr; it is a sticky seed head as its name suggests. It therefore has an advantage over burrs since those require gloves to remove, and gumweed can be comfortably pulled barehanded. But the two are common in the amount of rearrangement they can do to my ponies’ beautiful manes and forelocks. Even the foals with their short manes have adornments!
I have been told this is a particularly productive year for the weed, and I have been told by locals that it is an inevitable factor in equine ownership here. We did do some mowing around the sheds and waterers where we thought the ponies might be getting into gumweed, but I think my friend Bruce probably made the observation that will shape my management strategy: there is likely something particularly tasty growing under and around the gumweed that has attracted the ponies’ attention. He suggested it might be late season cheatgrass, and a USDA publication confirms that gumweed is often found alongside that species. (1)
Each pony will likely require an hour or two of work to get their manes and forelocks to flow free again. I’m pleased that my stallion and one mare have been confined and therefore haven’t modified their appearance like the other seven have. Two ponies in particular have strikingly new appearances. Drybarrows Calista looks like she has been roached: she has not a single strand of her mane or forelock flowing free. It is really odd to see such a ‘clean-headed’ Fell Pony! And after I worked for a few minutes on Willowtrail Wild Rose’s forelock, all I had to show for my efforts was what looked like a unicorn’s horn. Maybe that creature isn’t as fictional as we think!
The definition of a weed that I find most useful is ‘a plant growing where you don’t want it.’ Gumweed does have beneficial qualities. It is attractive to and useful for late-season pollinators, and since pollinators are having a rough go these days, that gives gumweed some redeeming value. Native Americans also apparently used it: “A decoction of root was used for liver trouble, and a paste made from flowering tops was applied to skin diseases, scabs and sores.” (2) I also found the Latin name for gumweed entertaining: Grindelia squarrosa! I will keep that entertainment in mind during my hours of work making my ponies look like Fells again!
© Jenifer Morrissey, 2019
