Kill Heron’s Bill and Cheat Grass

Mass Heron's Bill

May 13, 2013

Heron's Bill has been blooming for months, and is ripening its seed, poking its heron bills at the sky. It has small pink-purple flowers, filigree leaves, and seed pods up to 3 inches long.

It can grow up to 18 inches high and twice as wide, creating a fire hazard as it dries out. But its seeds are its worst problem. As they dry out, they pop off the plant, twisting up into a corkscrew shape except for the sticker seed at one end, and a straight tail at the other. When it gets wet, it unwinds, and the tail holds it still while the seed screws itself into the ground-or into your pet's skin, ear, or eye.

Even in poor ground, heron's bill makes big seed pods.

It has a tap root, but it can easily be pulled from damp soil by grabbing the entire plant at the crown. In dry or wet soil, it can be cut off its tap root below the crown with pruning scissors when seeded and the root will die, being an annual gone to seed.

Single cheat in dry bitter cress

Cheat grass has just begun to bloom, showing itself as it stretches out 2-3 feet high. It also has sticker seeds when ripe, merely sharp enough to penetrate clothing, particularly socks, and your pet's fur, of course. It is a major source of fire danger in this area, along with other dry, annual weeds.

Mass cheat looks like a lot, but is remarkably easy to pull.

Fortunately, this annual grass, like most other annual weeds, is easy to pull in bloom, even in dry soil; the roots shrink greatly as the seed stalk grows.

But few grasses are easy to pull if one cuts them as or before they bloom, but before they ripen seed. Annuals grow more root and seed stalks every time they are cut, until they ripen seed below cutting height. The same goes for heron's bill and most other annual broadleaf weeds. Weed control is seed control. Cutting is not seed control unless one scalps the ground, cutting at or below the crown.

This especially applies to foxtails; they grab the ground hard when cut, and are very hard to pull afterwards. Many plants, like foxtails, are harder to pull when they are dry. They pull easiest while they are flowering and still green.

Dock is also flowering and can be pulled. It is a broadleaf weed that puts up a stalk of green incomplete flowers 3-5 feet tall; its leaves are lanceolate with wavy edges. Before it flowers, it is impossible to pull it without sinking a shovel beside it; the leaves just break off the crown, and they keep growing back every time you tear them off the large root. But once its flowers are showing, the stalk is strongly attached to the root, and it pulls out.

Bitter Cress and Groundsel Are Blooming

Groundsel and Bitter cress, blooming.

Bitter Cress is blooming right now (late March) all over the county. You won't get a better chance to eliminate it from your yard than the next few weeks -- though a few plants can sprout and bloom all summer, right up to late fall. While it is blooming, they are relatively easy to see by their tiny white four-petal flowers, though the smallest plants are not obvious; some are as tiny as a half-inch wide and 1.5 inches tall, fully seeded out. The largest are 6 inches wide across the basal leaves with numerous stalks up to 18 inches tall seeded out. They are easiest to pull when they have started to develop seed pods.

Seeded bitter cress, bright and ugly, and actually harder to pull than when green.

They become a nearly invisible green mist when all the flowers are finished, but as they turn yellow and dry, they become an eyesore, as well as popping their seeds up to three feet in all directions at the slightest disturbance of the pods. By this time, seed control is impossible; all one can do is pull the dry stalks and resolve to do better next year.

Young bitter cress.

Other mustard family plants, most of them with yellow flowers, are also starting to bloom. The flowers are pretty, but you want to pull them before they seed out if you don't want more of them next year. Mustards don't spread by wind, and if you don't use unfiltered irrigation water, you can eliminate them over a few years by pulling them in flower.

Young groundsel

Another weed that is blooming right now, and quickly blowing out and spreading to your neighbors' yards or from them is groundsel. It is a composite flower of the same family as dandelion and wild lettuce and not pretty, much like a miniature wild lettuce, up to a foot tall, with squared-off leaves; the flowers are yellow, do not open fully, and bend over while they are in bloom, straightening as they form seed. It is the first blowing weed of the season, blooming in empty lots all over town. It's easy to pull when in bloom.

Groundsel seeding in a ditch

Dandelions are also starting to bloom. A famous gardener once said that if dandelions were rare and hard to grow, they would be a prized flower. Their dead-heads don't even look bad, and they can be tasty greens before they bloom-but once buds start to form in the base, they turn quite bitter.

Dandelions are equally easy to pull before and after blooming: not easy at all unless your soil is loose from generous mulching with compost or leaves. With big tap roots like these in tight soil, it's best to stick a shovel in next to the root, loosen, and then pull. Wild lettuce (not blooming yet) is easier to pull when in bloom, as it puts up a handy flower stalk and has shallower roots, but it is not a strong stalk, and you have to grab the base.

Gardening is growing plants where you want them to grow, not where they want to grow. Many a pretty flower shows itself to be a weed unless kept under tight control, and that goes double for flowers that cast their seeds to the wind.