If you were traveling the rural roads of our area, you would see fields covered with these yellow flowers. We have had tourists stop at the community store and ask about them. Farmers call them buttercups; I don't know their scientific name. They have a glossy sheen and are about the size of a nickel. To us who raise cattle, they are a nusiance, choking out the grass until they have made seed and die back. Usually we will spray with a herbicide which would be most effective while the plant is small, but weather conditions aren't always suitable at that time so they can quickly get ahead of the grass. Before pastures here were fertilized with chicken litter we didn't have this weed; perhaps the litter changed the nutrients in the soil. They make a very dense root system and can't be pulled easily if they get started in the garden. So what is beautiful to some is a real bother to us.Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Beautiful or Bothersome ?
If you were traveling the rural roads of our area, you would see fields covered with these yellow flowers. We have had tourists stop at the community store and ask about them. Farmers call them buttercups; I don't know their scientific name. They have a glossy sheen and are about the size of a nickel. To us who raise cattle, they are a nusiance, choking out the grass until they have made seed and die back. Usually we will spray with a herbicide which would be most effective while the plant is small, but weather conditions aren't always suitable at that time so they can quickly get ahead of the grass. Before pastures here were fertilized with chicken litter we didn't have this weed; perhaps the litter changed the nutrients in the soil. They make a very dense root system and can't be pulled easily if they get started in the garden. So what is beautiful to some is a real bother to us.
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I never realized they were a bother to farmers - I guess I am one that always thought they were pretty - I will think twice on that now when I see them and wonder what the farmer is thinking!
ReplyDeleteKaren
maedamafaldinha@gmail.com
My comment is basically what karenfae said - I didn't know that sweet little innocent buttercups could be a problem.
ReplyDeleteGuess there's good and bad in all of us....buttercups included!
(Ephemera here, posting under bbcracer's account)
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting is the change in the weed/wildflower population since we were kids. I don't remember the spring weeds, but I do remember the fields in summer used to be covered with Rudbeckia hirta, the Black-eyed Susan, and Coreopsis tinctoria called Tickseed on the web. You will still see these plants, but it just doesn't seem the same now as I remember it.