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Carolina foxtail | The wild thing for the week of 1/12/09
Barnyardgrass, Echinochloa crus-galli, is a native of Asia and is considered the world's worst weed in rice. It also can be found in other agronomic crops in Missouri, especially those in moist and rich soils.
In the 1800s, seed salesmen touted one variety of barnyardgrass as a "billion-dollar grass" for use as forage. Today, however, barnyardgrass is not considered useful. It requires a lot of water for ideal growth and is too succulent for hay, and so it never made it as desirable forage.
Barnyardgrass is a prolific seed-producer, has seed dormancy and can grow in a wide range of sunlight conditions. Barnyardgrass can rob 60 to 80 percent of plant-available nitrogen from the soil. It is able to out-compete rice when fertilizer is applied. Corn and grain sorghum losses have also occurred in sites infested with barnyardgrass.
Identification of barnyardgrass is relatively easy. It is one of the few commonly occurring weedy grasses that does not possess a ligule. (A ligule is a structure that can be seen, if present, by pulling the grass blade from the stem. It projects upward from where the blade joins the stem and may be either membranous or a ring of hair.) Blades are smooth on both surfaces; the sheath can be a little variable, usually smooth, but sometimes with some hairs at its base. Sheaths are compressed and often maroon-colored at the base. The stem is flattened at the base. The seedhead is a panicle (a highly branched flowering structure) and ranges in color from green to purple.
There are a number of types of barnyardgrass, distinguished by the length of the awn on the spikelet.
Being a summer annual, it is killed by frost.