What Makes a Weed, A Weed? – Farmside Landscape & Design

Weeds are all over the place – in our lawns, our gardens, in crevices in our sidewalks, walkways and driveways. This tenacity for progress, particularly in seemingly unhospitable circumstances like compacted soil, drought, and even pavement – is likely one of the defining traits of weeds. However what really makes a weed a weed? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a weed as “a plant that isn’t valued the place it’s rising and is often of vigorous progress.” If that sounds obscure, it’s as a result of it may be laborious to find out when a plant is taken into account a weed. A plant may be thought of a weed in a single atmosphere and a meals or helpful plant in one other.

In our subsequent sequence of weblog posts, we’re taking a deep dive into weeds – from their preliminary identification to steps to take to forestall them, strategies of removing and even what weeds can inform you about your soil, primarily based on which sorts you discover there.

Weed Traits

As famous earlier, weeds have an amazing capability to outlive, even thrive, in circumstances many different vegetation couldn’t. Listed below are another traits of weeds:

Weeds produce numerous seeds.Weed seeds have very lengthy viability.Weeds unfold in a wide range of methods, in each sexual and vegetative means.Weeds can face up to poor environmental circumstances, together with trampling.Weeds are aggressive spreaders.

Weeds may be dispersed in a wide range of methods, comparable to wind, shifting water (flooding), by attaching to people or animals or by being ingested and handed by birds.

Kinds of Weeds

A weed is usually a plant that may merely be undesirable the place it’s rising, or one thing of larger concern, inflicting financial losses, ecological injury, or creating well being issues for animals and people. Weeds are categorized by completely different attributes comparable to seasonal emergence, bodily construction, and their bigger impression on the atmosphere, people, and animals. Listed below are some frequent classifications of weeds:

Annual Weeds: Annual weeds are outlined as people who germinate from seeds and develop, flower, produce seeds and die inside 12 months or much less. Annual weeds are additional categorized by the season wherein they germinate and develop.  Winter annuals, comparable to chickweed, sprout within the fall, thrive in the course of the winter and die in late spring or early summer time. Summer time, or warm-season grasses comparable to crabgrass and goosegrass, sprout within the spring and thrive in summer time and early fall.

Perennial Weeds: Perennial weeds stay greater than 3 years. They reproduce from non-seed/ vegetative components comparable to bulbs, rhizomes, tubers, or stolons, although some additionally produce seeds. Perennial weeds, comparable to Virginia Buttonwood and white clover, are probably the most tough to manage due to their nice reproductive potential.

Biennial Weeds: There are additionally biennial weeds, which full their progress in two years. The primary yr, the plant produces leaves and shops meals. The second yr, it produces fruits and seeds. Biennial weeds are mostly present in untilled fields, pastures, and untended fencerows.

Frequent Invasive Weeds: Embrace each native and non-native weeds. Non-native weeds lack pure rivals or enemies to curtail their progress, which permits them to overrun native vegetation, displace species, and alter ecosystems. Basic examples embrace Kudzu and English Ivy.

Noxious Weeds: Embrace plant designated by federal, state, or native authorities officers as injurious to public well being, agriculture, recreation, wildlife, or property. Subject Bindweed and Purple Loosestrife are basic examples. See a listing of noxious weeds by state right here: http://wssa.internet/hyperlinks/noxious-weed-list/

Broadleaf Weeds: As their identify signifies, broadleaf weeds are weeds with leaves, comparable to dandelions, broadleaf plantain, chickweed and clover. Broadleaf weeds can unfold not solely by seeds, but additionally by way of rhizome or stolon. In case you go for chemical weed management strategies, it’s necessary to know whether or not you’ve gotten broadleaf or grassy weeds.

It is because most broadleaf weed killers are selective, permitting you to simply spot deal with weeds. Non-selective weed killers can be utilized for grassy weeds, but when not utilized rigorously, can kill different vegetation they contact.

Grassy Weeds: Grassy weeds have their identify as a result of they intently resemble fascinating grasses. This typically makes them harder to determine than broadleaf weeds. Grassy weed blades emerge as a single leaf from a germinated grass seed. They develop to be lengthy with parallel veins and have spherical, hole stems and laborious, closed joints (nodes) with alternating leaf blades on all sides. Crabgrass, Bent Grass, Tilt Grass, and Tough Stalk Bluegrass are kinds of grassy weeds.

Important Picture credit score S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay