24 Nebraskaland • June 2022
s a short-lived plant, gumweed lives the life of a scrappy
and unfairly maligned opportunist. When grasses are
heavily grazed, a streambank erodes, or repeated travel
creates a trail of bare ground, curlycup gumweed
jumps up and says, "Hold my beer!" It can't fi ght toe-to-toe
with perennial grasses, but if those grasses are temporarily
sidelined, gumweed can ably fi ll the space until the regulars
can return. As a reward for its service, we label it a "worthless
weed" and in some cases, actively mow it down or spray it
with herbicides.
Calling gumweed a weed is like getting angry at a substitute
teacher or backup quarterback because your favorite teacher
or player is sick or injured. Logically, we know we should be
grateful to them for stepping in, but change is hard, isn't it?
Actually, the better analogy is this: Curlycup gumweed is the
cool uncle who came to babysit when your parents went to
Vegas for the weekend. You knew he wouldn't be around for
long and that you'd get to eat pizza and stay up late playing
video games while he was there.
My appreciation for curlycup gumweed has grown
over the years, but it really skyrocketed on a late summer
afternoon in 2019. I was working for a few days at the Nature
Conservancy's Niobrara Valley Preserve on the north edge of
the Sandhills, and while doing butterfl y surveys, I spotted a
few species fl itting around a patch of gumweed along a trail
road in the prairie. As I came closer, I realized the butterfl ies
were just a tiny sample of the crowd of invertebrates hanging
around the fl owers.
I grabbed my camera and tripod and spent a few minutes
stalking the butterfl ies, moths, bees, fl ies, grasshoppers,
crickets and beetles drawn to the pollen and nectar of
curlycup gumweed. As I photographed them, I realized I
wasn't the only one taking advantage of the abundance of
insects. Several spiders were also hanging out among the
Gumweed Bon
A
