I am zone 6A in michigan. Much of my lawn is covered in these little yellow flowers and nice red berries. I really liked them. I could still mow them over to maintain a low level yard. They seem to attract birds and rabbits and groundhogs which I like
…but I finally found out that they are Potentilla Indica or Mock Strawberries which are from Asia and invasive to the US.
What are some good alternatives to this? I feel like moss or clover don't produce the nice flowers or berries like this and are therefore somewhat "less productive." Are there any other good low height flowering plants that I can plant for a nice maintainable lawn area?
by lilpancakes14
4 Comments
They provide better wildlife value then alot of plants, and they dont take over areas that are not disturbed, so I would leave them
A few questions:
* Is your yard sunny, shady, or somewhere in between?
* On a scale from “My yard is bone dry” to “My yard sometimes has standing water”, where does your yard fall?
* How much foot traffic does your yard get?
* How big is your yard?
I have them in my yard. I’ll get to them eventually…but I’ve been chunking out sections of turf…planting natives and then policing the new areas well for invasives…so far it seems like a manageable process. I tackled the worst invasives like Buckthorn in other parts of the lot and just let the aggressive natives take those areas over.
Common cinquefoil (potentilla simplex) and wild strawberry (fragaria virginiana) are both really similar and native. I’m actually also in Michigan and have tons of both of those I could give you, if you’re around Oakland county. Or if you get them from a native plant nursery you would only need to get a few and they will spread a lot on their own.