BALCARRES, Sask. – A UFO? A pothead? A well-fed goose?
Whatever brought it, Balcarres, Sask., farmer Norman Grubb knows one thing about the mysterious plants that appeared in his canola field this year.
“They’re strange looking damned things,” said Grubb, voicing a view shared by local producers and Fort Qu’Appelle town dwellers who have seen the odd flora.
In the rural service centre, agrologist Dwayne Simmons holds the plant up to its full height – about 2.5 metres – and marvels at the interloper.
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The plant appears to be a robust and almost frighteningly fertile vine. It has a thick, octagonal green trunk with whorls of about a dozen pods every 50 millimetres along its branches. The top is resplendent with delicate, deep purple flowers.
Is it a rank mutant of chilling portent?
Simmons said he hasn’t seen anything like it before, nor have any producers he has questioned.
Grubb encountered the plants while swathing a canola field. On one round he saw a number of the large vines twisting across a patch of lodged crop. On the next round he cut his way through more of them.
The dozen plants were concentrated in one patch, he said. Closer inspection revealed a large number of pods, and he decided to remove the plants in case they represented the next great weed invasion.
Simmons has sent photographs of the plant to an Agriculture Canada researcher in Saskatoon, and sent samples to provincial agriculture researchers.
Because the plants were grouped together, Grubb is convinced foreign seeds were not mixed with his canola seed. In that case, distribution would have been wider.
The plants appeared near the site of a former farmstead, so Simmons suggested they could be a garden flower planted by an earlier producer trying to beautify his land.
But after consulting some local women with old-time gardening knowledge, no memories or recognition of the plant have been found, Simmons said.
Grubb also wonders if his ignorance of the plant comes from his unfamiliarity with contraband.
“I sure hope it’s not some kind of a dope plant,” he said, suggesting someone could have sneaked into his field, planted the unusual seeds and forgotten to return and harvest the ripe plants.
“Maybe it’s a relative to marijuana and the police will be looking for me,” Grubb said with a chuckle.
He insists he has not been carrying out nuclear or genetic engineering tests on his land, although he jokes there is a possibility that UFOs could have planted them.
“They might have dropped by the dugout for a drink,” he said, tongue in cheek.
Dropped in droppings
The dugout offers another clue to plant origin, since it is often visited by flocks of geese. With their digestive systems processing southern and Caribbean meals eaten during spring migration, they might have left solid digestive and seed-laden reminders of their visit. Mother Nature would have done the rest.
Grubb has never planted canola on the field before, which might be the final clue in the puzzle. He chemically fallowed the land last year and sprayed this year before seeding.
The plant may like growing with canola, or maybe it takes nourishment from the herbicide, Grubb speculated. He is interested in the unusual growths, but their potential as weeds worries him.
“If it’s something that’s hard to get rid of, I sure don’t want them out there.”
