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Grasses
- Bluegrass/June Grass -
June Grass has pale green silvery
colored flowers and lower stems covered with small hair. The stem is hollow
 at the bottom of the plant. June Grass
grows to about 1-2 feet and is a cool season grass commonly found in sandy
soil of dry upland prairies and open woods.
- Orchard -
Perennial, cool season, irregular sodding grass with a dense root system. Highly productive and
palatable to livestock. Its color ranges from green to bluish- green and is
one of the few grasses that grow well under trees
- Fescue -
The fescues are cool season grasses that are adapted to the cooler zones
and into Canada. The fescue species are easily seeded and include a sub-species of tall bunching grasses named tall fescue and fine shorter fescues
named creeping red, hard, chewings and sheep fescue.
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Bermuda - is one of the most sun loving warm season lawn and pasture
grasses.
- Timothy
- was unintentionally introduced to North America by early
settlers.
- Ryegrass - Ryegrasses contain some species which are important grasses
for both lawns and as pasture and hay for livestock, being a highly
nutritious stock feed. Like many cool-season grasses, it is often infected
by a clandestine(fungus) which lives within its leaves.
- Johnson - Johnson grass is a tall, coarse, grass with stout roots. It
grows in dense clumps or nearly solid stands and can
reach 8 feet (2.4 meters) in height. Leaves are smooth, 6-20 inches
(15.2-50.8 cm) long, and have a white mid-vein. Stems are pink to rusty red
near the base. Flower clusters are large, loosely branched,
purplish, and hairy. Spike-lets occur in pairs or threes and each has a
conspicuous awn. Seeds are reddish-brown and nearly 1/8 inch (0.3 cm) long.
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Weeds
- Ragweed - a yellow flowering
weed, is a member of the Aster Family that often flourishes in disturbed
vacant soils which can not support other vegetation. It flourishes during
dry hot spells which promote growth and pollen formation
- Pigweed/Careless Weed -
any of several coarse annual
plants of cosmopolitan distribution that are often troublesome weeds
- Lambs Quarter - Lambs
quarter can frequently be found growing in vegetable gardens, on disturbed
soil, and along the fringes of fields and banks. The plants can grow
to about four feet in height with multiple branches forming off of a main
squarish looking central stem. Lambs quarter leaves often have a white,
pollen-like substance coating their undersides
- CockleBur - Because seeds germinate best after being soaked in water,
the plants are usually found along the shores of ponds where water has
receded.
- Marsh Elder/Poverty Weed -
a
significant weed of rangelands and overgrazed pastures. Leaves
are 1 to 3 cm
long and 1 cm wide, sometimes with a curved or wavy appearance, hairy and
mostly lacking stalks ie. growing direct from a main stem, grey-green. Lower
leaves opposite, upper leaves smaller and alternate. Flowers -
greenish-yellow, in 5 to 7 mm diameter heads on short stalks from leaf and
stem junctions near the top of the plant. Each flower head consists of both
male and female flowers. Seeds - egg shaped, brown or dark grey, 2 to 3 mm long, coarsely surfaced. 6 or 7
are produced in each flower head.
- English Plantain - English Plantain has many long, narrow leaves and multiple flower stalks.
The leaves can grow up to 16 inches long. The flower stalks have an ovoid (oval-shaped) flower head with tiny greenish-white flowers. The flower head
lengthens as it ages. flowers from May to October. This plant is perennia, meaning it comes back every year.
- Dock/Sheep Sorrel - Sheep Sorrel: a medium-sized plant with tiny reddish flowers and arrow-shaped leaves; flowers tiny, reddish,
clustered on slender stalk up to 20 inches long, in late spring; fruits
tiny, inconspicuous, yellow-brown, in papery wrappers; leaves arrow-shaped,
pointy-tipped, up to four inches long, with a pair of narrow, pointed lobes
pointing outward from the leaf’s base
- Sage - Although thee are many
types, Mediterranean sage being just one, is primarily a
rangeland weed, although it does occur in alfalfa and grain crops. It is not
palatable, and this lack of grazing by livestock helps with the spread and
establishment in pastures and rangelands. The biology of this plant is well
adapted to facilitate the spread in many western states – high seed
production, the ability for summer dormancy to avoid drought, the tumbling
dispersal of seeds, and the ability to adapt to a wide range of habitat and
environmental conditions in rangeland.
- Waterhemp - currently is one of the most troublesome weeds
for farmers in the western Cornbelt.
- Russian Thistle - Virtually everyone recognizes mature the
Russian thistle, which looks like the skeleton of a normal shrub - A
tumbleweed. As it rolls down a desert road, a Russian thistle plants do what
they do best, disperse seeds.
- Kochia/Firebush - is
grown as a forage crop for sheep and cattle and as an ornamental. The bushy
plants grow 1 to 7 ft tall and have taproots. The stems are
light green and much branched. The many alternate leaves are hairy, 1 to 2
in. long, narrow, pointed and attached directly to the stems. Small, green
flowers and seeds are produced in narrow heads at the leaf axils. The plant
is dark green when young and turns red as it matures.
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