If I understand correctly, RoundUp IS a systemic. It is recommended for ficaria because the Roundup will be absorbed down to the tubers, hopefully killing them.

You might need to lift your most precious plants, make sure that there are no ficaria tubers hiding in their roots, and store them somewhere (in pots, say) while you work aggressively on eradicating the ficaria with spraying and digging. You might try alternating the roundup with Triclopyr/DIcamba containing weedkillers (those labeled to kill violets)

I've read that the window for killing the stuff is when they are leafing out but before blooms.

I've just discovered a patch blooming in my yard, so I hope that it isn't too late!

If you are getting the roundup on the ground over the roots, and not on the roots directly, you might get by with little to no harm done. No guarantees though. Just don't spray if you are going to have rain in the next 48 hours.

aw crikey ....

applied to the end of a cut root ..; yes.. thats how i recommend killing everything ...

applied to bark.. wont kill anything ... you need to hit the vascular system of the plajt.. so it can soak into the life blood of the plant ...

so if you are talking about an unblemished surface root ... i would have to think it wont have any effect at all ... but then.. i would go out there and try to hit all the roots .. eh??

ken

ps: i also though RU is a systemic .. its why you need to apply it to the cambium layer of the plant ... so as to kill roots and all ...

“Roundup” now is a brand encompassing a whole host of products with varying ingredients.

Some contain no glyphosate, and are formulated to be used on lawns, to kill lawn weeds (and not the lawn).

Years ago, I used a Roundup product containing glyphosate to kill a difficult weed growing within the root zone of a hydrangea macrophylla. The hydrangea died. The product was carefully applied; it contained glyphosate and dicamba. I blame me, and the dicamba.

Some Roundup products sold now contain glyphosate mixed with triclopyr.

Of the 3 - glyphosate, dicamba and triclopyr - I’d be most concerned about the last 2 used within the root zone of desirable plant, but I’d take care with all 3.

Regarding fig buttercup: other sources say treat when half the plants have bloomed. Either way, the window is pretty brief. Overall colder weather here this year seems to have slowed progression through their life cycle a bit, thus extending the window a bit.

The answer from rifis (zone 6b-7a NJ) is a good one.

I have sprayed roundup near the roots of ornamentals for over 20 years and I sure I've never had a loss I can definitely trace to it. (in other words, a certain % plants are always in the process of dying, so I can't rule out one or two over the years didn't die because of it, but generally, no, it is safe. NORMAL amounts of it for weed control are not going to absorb through roots of normal plants. If you pour a cup of concentrate on a plant, it might kill it. That's not the way it's supposed to be used)

The phenoxy and growth regulator type herbicides are more dangerous in that respect as rifis mentioned.

I use the granular roundup quikpro version.

But thank you all, this made me feel better and less restricted to nuke this chemical on the nasty weed back to hell.

I planted some kerrias in my woodland where there are those weeds in the ground so I had to carefully pick out all tubers before I backfill the same soil. I had sprayed them 4 times already this year so they were already dying but you never know(sprayed at least 10 times last year and still came back this year) so I decided to remove them. But in the very likely event that they return next year, I wasn’t sure if I could spray on the rootball of my kerrias but looks like I won’t have to worry anymore!

I would not spray anywhere near the Kerrias. They don’t form sturdy bark and I am pretty certain that any drop chemical touching them would damage, if not kill, them. They are in the Rosaceae and I know from experience that another member of that family, Raspberries, is vulnerable to Glyphosate, however careful you think you are being. Clearly spraying isn’t working on the Celandines if you are having to repeat it constantly. I think you’ll just have to continue the manual removal and use thick mulching which will not threaten your other plantings or your garden ecosystem.

My source (OSU) did emphasize that it would take years of repeated and persistent effort to rid any extensive area of lesser celandine - it is just that aggressive.

This is curious to me. I'm not aware so far of any plants requiring multiple application of properly applied herbicide to kill them besides Ivy and Smilax. It would especially surprise me if a member of the dainty buttercup family was so tough. I have to wonder if this is some kind of user error. Do they have leaves like Alchemilla that repel water? In that case, keep adding a surfactant until the maximum recommended label concentration of glyphosate, sticks. Also if your water is especially hard it can partly deactivate glyphosate. In that case, a 99 cent (maybe 1.29 with inflation) investment in a gallon of supermarket distilled water would seem like a wise investment.

Problem is right on the other side of my fence is a wooded meadowfield of ficarias so most likely the spreading bulblets from that will invade my property the following year no matter how many I kill in my property.

I actually slightly overdose the granular roundup rate now to ensure its death. They do start to brown a little but not all, some are still lush green. I did notice some of the tubers I dug up yesterday that were mush. So it definitely works to some of them but some just don’t die. I do try to spray it evenly, properly adjusting the nozzle so it fansprays instead of the liquid shooting out straight

Roundup, like most herbicides, is a salt. It works by desiccating the plant. So, as a general rule, it's most effective on parts of the plant that would dry up during a drought. Like leaves and root ends. Not mature woody parts.

Heruga, you might try buying deep garden edging and sinking it along the bottom of your fence. I had to do this to keep the neighbor's ditch lilies, mint, sweet woodruff, and aegopodium out. It would have to be deep enough to block the tubers, but also enough above ground to block the bulbils.

I will look into it but the spots are slopy where water runoffs, otherwise I would create a flood issue on my already flood prone property. It would also be labor and cost intensive to do 150+ ft of edging barrier. But thanks for the advice.

I have been manually digging out the tubers but some of them are so darn deep(6+ in) that they simply break off when I stick the weeder and try to lift the soil up. I’ve tried ’painting’ those weeds that are close to my perennials and in my lawngrass with a small paintbrush because I don’t want to spray near the good plants but that seems to have little effect.. I guess I should just accept the fact that they will stay with me forever. My god I somehow unfortunately have every noxious weed in my property- ficaria, Japanese knotweeds, reeds, mugworts, sedges, ampelopsis, and every annual weed as well!

"Roundup, like most herbicides, is a salt."

NO. Just, no.

Dead plant tissues tend to dry! That might be what you are thinking of. Glyphosate, for example, is sprayed on non-organic oat crops to make them easier to harvest. (this is why, bozos who flip out about me judiciously spraying a few weeds better be eating all organic foods, or they are getting way more "roundup" from their diet than the picoliters they might inhale living next to me) That has nothing to do with its property as a "salt". There are plenty "salts" (in the chemical sense) that do not kill plants, like ammonium sulfate. The non-salt, free acid form of glyphosate, though nobody markets it, would be toxic to plants as well.

Many stronger herbicides are actually esters, which are not salts.

Roundup inhibits the plant's ability to manufacture certain amino acids, so they die. Nothing like the way table salt (NaCl) kills or damages plants.

"Not mature woody parts." A rather small amount of glyphosate, applied property, can easily kill a large tree.

A glimmer of light is that Ficaria is an ephemeral. There will be no sign of it in a couple of weeks..... until next spring.

could be that their growth habit stymies the round-up, even if you kill the main bulb, there are "seeds", I think bulbillen, mini bulbs in the axils of the stems, and I think those could survive the round up and reappear later, they are kind of dry, and fall off the main stem when I try to weed them, and they produce actual seeds as well

I spent about 90 minutes yesterday digging out my patch (I took that long trying to do as careful and thorough a job as possible.) The patch is a bit less than 2 foot circumference. I was able to use a shovel around two edges at first, to slide under deeply and lift, but the patch is near a large maple and there are root breaking the surface where the weed is - so I soon had to resort to my horihori knife and my fingers. Those tubers are so tiny! I am sure that I had to have missed or knocked loose many. And of course the roots went much deeper than that, so fine that they can't be picked out.

I will be prepared with the proper weedkiller next spring and will watch for its re-emergence.

I wonder if Iron-X will work on it? That's the only thing I use for lawn weeds, if I can't pull them, which is rare.

My recollection from when I grew** Ranunculus ficaria is that it has very glossy, fleshy leaves. And that would indicate a cuticle or waxy covering - much like English ivy - that makes it more resistant to herbicide treatments. There are adjuvants you can purchase to make the herbicide more effective, although I'd be incline to try to manually remove the offenders and use any herbicide as a last resort. IMO, I find manual removal is often the best method to get rid of anything not wanted.

** When I say 'grew' I mean intentionally :-) Back in the day before this became such a widespread plague, named forms of this plant were hot properties!! I remember some early Heronswood catalogs listing a dozen or more named forms, like 'Brazen Hussy', 'Cupreus' and 'Dusky Maiden'. I know I was smitten :-) But it didn't take long before offspring appeared that had reverted to the far more vigorous species and they certainly tried to take over! Chalk that experience up to one of many my less experienced gardening self encountered with over-eager spreaders!!

Thanks Gardengal. I had the vaguest memory of seeing those for sale!

And, so, if they have a waxy coating, that is indeed a sign an extra amount of surfactant might be helpful. It's not "EPA approved" but I have found that for super waxy plants, a few drops of shampoo helps spread even better than most commercial spreader/stickers. (and should be used in addition to them, not in lieu of them. The big box stuff Heruga is using not doubt has a small amount of surfactant already added) Probably because they usually contain all sorts of waxy emulsifiers, detergents and silicones. To give people's hair the "silky smoothness" they think is a sign of cleanliness. (it's actually a sign of a chemical coating, but whatever)

One way to help visualize if you are "spreading" is to add quite a few drops of food coloring, or a marking dye, to the herbicide mix. This will allow you to more easily see whether the stuff is forming droplets and rolling off.

“A glimmer of light is that Ficaria is an ephemeral.”

Hardly a glimmer of light for nearby ephemerals in synch with ficaria. More like a death sentence for them.

Then again, it’s not Japanese knotweed.

I did say a glimmer... I have it in my garden and know just how tenacious it is.

Roundup is a salt. it's not NaCl. A salt is what you get when you mix an acid and a base.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)

"The main active ingredient of Roundup is the isopropylamine salt of glyphosate"

So, when you said No, You actually meant yes, And I never claimed it killed plants because it was a salt. You imagined that. Rather being a salt is what allows it to be absorbed into the plant.

Pretty much everything you wrote is something you imagined I wrote. Most herbicides are salts and it effects the leaves and small roots more. Not the woody parts.

And roundup is a dessicant..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation

it doesn't dessicate like table salt would, but I never wrote that it did. You imagined I wrote that.

It was tiresome enough having to lecture you about how Glyphosate works, now I find myself having to explain how language works, as well?

"Roundup, like most herbicides, is a salt. It works by desiccating the plant. So, as a general rule, it's most effective on parts of the plant that would dry up during a drought. Like leaves and root ends. Not mature woody parts."

Guess what? When you write a sentence defining something, then write a sentence saying how something works, you are creating an argument through association. Not that it matters anyhow, since the second sentence was a falsehood. (and the first one irrelevant) Glyphosate herbicides actually works on AQUATIC plants. Imagine that!!! How would the plants 'desiccate' when they are sitting in a pond? LMAO. It would be an insult to children to call this child's play!

"Rather being a salt is what allows it to be absorbed into the plant." So triclopyr ester with a non-ionic surfactant in distilled water - a mixture total devoid of any salts - will not kill clovers or black locust suckers? Wow, I suggest you publish a paper with your scientific breakthrough.