The common name of “creeping” buttercup doesn’t capture the voracious way this plant eats up territory. It should be renamed Smothercup. And if you ever make the naive mistake of thinking that the garden is asleep in the winter, this maleficent marauder will prove you very wrong. It uses the fall and winter to spread by stolons across large swaths of the garden so that when you step out for your early spring clean-up, you have yards of buttercup to eradicate.

I will say this positive thing about this invasive weed–digging out these plants provides so much pleasure. No other weed gives me this much satisfaction. It has to do with the way the plant grows–there is a thick wad of white roots at each node or under each main plant, and prying them up and pulling them out, you know you actually have removed the weed–it isn’t like a taproot that breaks off and resprouts. Once they are gone, they are gone. But, for me, they are never quite gone.

My future plans for these plants are to do a better job of eradicating them early so I don’t have as much of a problem through the year. Specifically, they need to be dug out from the garden in front of the greenhouse and the bed near the fence in the orchard garden. One of these wet but warm days I will rip the all out and feel very proud and satisfied.