Production Blog

Don't Eat These Daisies

Fields of yellow are appearing across the Heartland as weather delays planting, but weed scientists don't recommend using these flowers in a bouquet. Don't feed them to livestock either. (DTN photo by Pamela Smith)

OWENSBORO, Kentucky (DTN) -- There's nothing mellow about those weeds now painting unplanted fields a vibrant yellow. Butterweed -- more officially known as cressleaf groundsel -- contains compounds that have poisonous properties.

I found unplanted fields awash in the stuff during a recent trip to parts of southern Illinois, southwestern Indiana and along the Kentucky side of the Ohio River.

The history books tell us Owensboro, Kentucky, was originally called Yellow Banks. Perhaps those early settlers were met with the same stunning display of butterweed that I found? Native to the U.S., butterweed can be found from Texas east to Florida, northward along the Atlantic coast to Virginia and west to Nebraska.

Farmers in Kentucky identified it as wild mustard and that's a common mistake, according to University of Illinois weed scientist Aaron Hager. However, the four-petaled flower of wild mustard (a brassica) actually looks quite different than the daisy-like butterweed, which is a member of the Aster family. This time of year, one sure way to tell the difference is to look for the hollow stem. As the butterweed stem elongates, it also often takes on a purplish tint.

Several years ago I, arrived at an Illinois farm field to do some photography and found the farm children merrily putting the hollow stems of this weed to use. Kids will be kids -- one had found it served as a superb peashooter. The other was using butterweed stem as a straw to slurp water from a jug.

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Aware of the toxic properties of this plant, I gently suggested this might not be the best use. As my own children will attest, overly anxious mothers spoil all the fun. Almost everyone seems surprised to learn plants of this genus contain hepatotoxins in the form of pyrrolizidine alkaloids.

Hager said butterweed favors moist to saturated soils and thrives in areas such as wastelands, pastures, fencerows and roadsides. The increased adoption of no-till and reduced-tillage conservation practices has increasingly lured it into crop fields.

Bulletins from The Ohio State University indicate it's unlikely that animals will consume significant quantities of groundsel under typical grazing conditions, especially when more palatable forages are available. However, haying significant amounts of the plant along with forage could pose a greater risk.

Travis Legleiter, Purdue Weed Science Program specialist, said he couldn't help but make a few stops in southern Indiana this week to take pictures of fields that were covered in cressleaf groundsel. Delayed planting in many parts of Indiana has greatly encouraged the growth.

"As for recommendations, farmers need to apply burndowns as soon as they can as the weeds are already flowering," Legleiter said. "We would really prefer to have had these burndowns on already or have had a fall program in place to take care of these winter annuals."

He said 1 to 2 quarts of a 4-pound glyphosate product plus 0.5 pound of 2,4-D will help manage the weeds. "Although, again, at this point it is a little late with the weeds being so big. Some producers may choose to hold the 2,4-D out of the mix to avoid planting restrictions," he added.

In 2009, Hager and his then graduate student, Jeremy Lake, took a look at herbicide selection and application timing for control of butterweed. They found fall-applied treatments provided very good control. Less control was achieved when identical treatments were applied in the spring -- likely because plants were so much larger at application time.

For more information on cressleaf groundsel, go to:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/…

http://www.btny.purdue.edu/…

http://ipm.missouri.edu/…

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