{"id":4449,"date":"2013-09-01T14:32:36","date_gmt":"2013-09-01T06:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/?p=4449"},"modified":"2013-09-02T15:48:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T07:48:00","slug":"guilty-pleasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/01\/guilty-pleasure\/","title":{"rendered":"A Guilty Pleasure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-048.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4422\" alt=\"20130831 048\" src=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-048-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-048-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-048.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>These bright &#8220;mini sunflowers&#8221; are the prolific <a href=\"http:\/\/www.agric.wa.gov.au\/PC_93454.html\" target=\"_blank\">capeweed<\/a>\u00a0(<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arctotheca_calendula\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Arctotheca calendula<\/em><\/a>), so I did feel guilty admiring them. \u00a0Like the \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/16\/bad-pink-flowers\/\">metallic pink flower<\/a> on our other major weed, the guildford grass, it is a thing of great beauty. \u00a0I had never looked closely at them, so I hadn&#8217;t noticed the metallic blue-black centre. \u00a0This the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plantzafrica.com\/plantab\/asteraceae3.htm\" target=\"_blank\">disc floret<\/a> typical of flowers in the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Asteraceae\" target=\"_blank\">asteraceae<\/a> family &#8211; like asters, daisies and sunflowers. \u00a0 The inner portion of the flower head is composed of many small tubular flowers or florets. These gradually open out as the flower matures and the pollen holding &#8220;style&#8221; is pushed up through the tube.\u00a0 The yellow petals or straps are the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nttlphoto.com\/botany\/asters-goldenrods\/Glossary\/disk-floret.htm\" target=\"_blank\">ray florets<\/a>. \u00a0The bees and hover flies were almost rolling themselves in the pollen. <a href=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-011.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4426\" alt=\"20130831 011\" src=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-011-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-011-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-011.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It is a weed of concern as it out-competes other plants and can cause\u00a0nitrate\/nitrite poisoning of livestock,\u00a0particularly ruminants. \u00a0 The horses eat the flowers in the morning when they are closed and seem to love the dried up plant in summer. \u00a0 The main issue for the plant is that it plays host to the <a href=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/20\/haleotydeus-destructor\/\">red legged earthmite<\/a>. \u00a0 We have a lot less now than <a href=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/22\/capeweed\/\">we had in the first year<\/a> as we have slashed many areas that it used to grow and planted other things like the kikuyu, oats or trees. Apparently it can taint the milk of the goats, but the plants should have died off before we start drinking the milk.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-009.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4427\" alt=\"20130831 009\" src=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-009-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-009-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-009.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-032.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4423\" alt=\"20130831 032\" src=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-032-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-032-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-032.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These bright &#8220;mini sunflowers&#8221; are the prolific capeweed\u00a0(Arctotheca calendula), so I did feel guilty admiring them. \u00a0Like the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4422,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-property"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/20130831-048.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4449"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4454,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4449\/revisions\/4454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathmiller.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}