Found a white root that resembles a carrot in my flour bed, quite large, what is it?
Say your prayers. It’s the massive white tuberous root of the highly invasive, perennially pathogenic, terrible Tree Of Heaven, Ailanthus altissima: www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/plants/tre… Sprouts like a weed (which it is), grows like a house on fire, toward the middle of the summer it blooms (unobtrusively) and then it developes these little berry clusters that grow and grow until they turn black-berry colored. One writer calls this “the tree equivalent of kudzu”. In Oho, locals call it “Stink Tree” (“Why this is called tree-of-heaven is a bit of a mystery…”): www.athensconservancy.org/invasives.sh… Dig up the whole white root, and yank as deeply as possible any seedlings you see sprouting nearby. A noxious pest to blondes, brunettes and redheads alike.
Many members of the carrot family are related to hemlock and are poisonous, so I would not taste it. It could be baby’s breath or queen anne’s lace or hemlock. Some people think these kinds of plants are pretty, some think they are a weed. Mirabilis tubers tend to be black or purply and bulbous, but there is much variability, so they *could* look whitish and carroty. They are quite pretty, so I don’t think of them as weeds, but they can be invasive. Four o clocks are also poisonous, so still do not taste. I have no idea what ailanthus roots look like, but they quickly make a pretty strong whippy stem when they grow that grows very tall and tree-like and resistant to weed whacking. You’d know if your garden got invaded by these. Ailanthus are known to secrete phytotoxins with their roots (the neighbors haven’t gotten rid of their ailanthus and it is killing a lovely 20′ nerium oleander, but their camellia love it, so go figure) so what is dead (if anything) around them?
