Spermacoce verticillata

(Spermacoce means seed-point, because the little dry fruits have four points.  Verticillata presumably refers to whorls (verticils) of  flowers and young leaves.)

Rubiaceae (Coffee Family)

Common plants interest me more than the rare species, because the common ones are everyday friends.   There’s so much to discover right under our noses.   Today’s plant is literally everyday in parking lots, asphalt cracks, roadside weeds, pastures, and lawns.     Spermacoce verticillata is an exotic invader from the Coffee Family as well as one of the most abundant and toughest weeds in South Florida.   If you live here and want to see it,  step out the door.  The plants can rise five feet tall, or lie low and spread into a patch where grazed or mowed.    On top of overall immortality, the plants re-root where they touch the ground, and the tiny seedlike fruit segments boast a 50 percent germination rate.  There’s no stopping it.

Buttonweed on dismal soil.  It doesn’t care.  Today’s photos by John Bradford.

That is good news is you dislike mole crickets.    The holy grail of pest control is a natural approach using pests of the pests, although that has been known to backfire when the attackers spread to native relatives of the target enemies.

Evil pests of Florida lawn-lovers are invasive mole crickets, multiple species.    Their arch enemy is a parasitoid wasp Larra bicolor, introduced from South America, as is today’s weed, the wasp’s favorite nectar plant.    The wasp lays an egg on the mole cricket, where the resulting larva sucks life from its host, terminally.  All  natural cricket control!    Buttonweed is available commercially to foster the cricket-killing wasps.  In that context call it “Larra Flower” echoing the Latin name of the wasp, although somehow I don’t think market-driven neo-naming will stick any better than “Freedom Fries.”

Here we have a case of cultivating one invasive exotic to feed another introduced exotic to encourage it to kill still another invader, an exotic ménage à trois.   All three species have native Florida relatives.  I have scant idea if that implies risk.  From a standpoint of general principles, ignorance, and neurotic personality, it worries me a little, especially  with respect to native mole crickets, although studies do show them to resist the wasp, so that risk is probably, if not certainly, low.   Spermacoce verticillata is so ubiquitous already that cultivating more is not likely to cause additional harm.

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Relevant link for extra info