Weed

/weed/, n.

Thurlow /therr"loh/, 1797-1882, U.S. journalist and politician.

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Any plant growing where it is not wanted.

On land under cultivation, weeds compete with crops for water, light, and nutrients. On rangelands and in pastures, weeds are those plants that grazing animals dislike or that are poisonous. Many weeds are hosts of plant disease organisms or of insect pests. Some originally unwanted plants later were found to have virtues and came under cultivation, while some cultivated plants, when transplanted to new climates, escaped cultivation and became weeds in the new habitat.

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▪ botany

Introduction

      any plant growing where it is not wanted. Ever since human beings first attempted the cultivation of plants, they have had to fight the invasion by weeds into areas chosen for crops. Some unwanted plants later were found to have virtues not originally suspected and so were removed from the category of weeds and taken under cultivation. Other cultivated plants, when transplanted to new climates, escaped cultivation and became weeds. The category of weeds thus is ever changing, and the term is a relative one.

      Because, for various reasons, weeds interfere with man's activities, many ways have been developed for suppressing or eliminating them. These methods vary with the nature of the weed itself, the means at hand for disposal, and the relation of the method to the environment. For financial reasons, methods used on a golf course or a public park cannot be applied on range land or in the forest. Chemicals sprayed on a roadside to eliminate unsightly weeds that constitute a fire or traffic hazard are not proper for use on cropland. And mulching, used to keep down weeds in a home garden, is not feasible on large farms. Weed control, in any event, has become a highly specialized activity employing thousands of trained persons. Universities and agricultural colleges teach courses in weed control, and industry provides the necessary technology. Governmental workers and private individuals are engaged daily in the practice of weed control because the growing of food and fibre crops depends on it for current levels of production.

 The many reasons for controlling weeds become more complex with the increasing development of technology. Plants become weeds as a function of time and place. Tall weeds on roadsides were no problem in the horse-and-buggy days, but today they obscure vision on roads built for speed and make death traps of intersections. Sharp-edged grasses are nominal nuisances in a cow pasture; when the area is converted to a golf course or a public park, they become insufferable. Poison oak (see photograph—>) is rather a pleasant shrub on a sunny hillside in the open country; in a Boy Scout camp ground it is a definite health hazard. And nothing is more pleasant than the waving heads of grass on the hillside in spring. But when the hillside becomes a tank farm for storage of oil the fire hazard becomes serious in summer. Such examples could be given ad infinitum to cover every aspect of agriculture, forestry, highway, waterway and public land management, arboretum, park and golf-course care, and finally home landscape maintenance.

      Weeds compete with crop plants for water, light, and nutrients. Weeds of range lands and pastures may be unpalatable to animals, or even poisonous; they may cause injuries, as with lodging of foxtails (Alopecurus species) in horses' mouths; they may lower values of animal products, as in the cases of cockleburs (Xanthium species) in wool; they may add to the burden of animal care, as when horses graze in tarweeds (Madia species) and become covered with a black, sticky mess. Many weeds are hosts of plant disease organisms. Examples are prickly lettuce (Lactuca scariola) and sowthistle (Sonchus species) that serve as hosts for downy mildew; wild mustards (Brassica species) that host clubroot of cabbage; and saltbrush (Atriplex species) and Russian thistle, in which curly top virus overwinters, to be carried to sugar beets by leafhoppers. Many weeds are hosts of insect pests.

      Modern weed control can be classified as mechanical, chemical, or biological.

Mechanical control.

      Mechanical weed control began when man first pulled weeds from his cereal crop and attempted to grow a single plant species, free from all plant competition. This was the start of monoculture, a method that since has come to dominate agriculture, but a process that opposes nature's way of growing plants. Contrary to the principles of ecology, farmers throughout the world grow the major food, fibre, and forage crops in a monoculture because experience has shown that the highly improved modern crop species give their highest yield under this system.

      From hand pulling, man devised simple tools such as the spud, the knife, and the hoe to eliminate weeds. For thousands of years, from the Egyptian culture to the Renaissance, these simple methods were used. The first efforts to turn away from simple hand methods and mechanize the arduous task of weed control began in 17th-century England. Since then there has been continuous improvement of agricultural tools used to destroy weeds and of cultural methods employed to minimize weed growth. The principal virtue of cultivation of row crops is the control of weeds. And any method of weed control that minimizes tillage tends to conserve soil structure and maintain fertility.

      In addition to tillage, other mechanical methods of weed control involve burning, grazing, the use of ducks or geese in certain crops (in cotton and mint especially), and electrovating, applying a strong electrical current. All of these methods have drawbacks: there is the arduous, painful nature of hand weeding; the repetitious and often harmful nature of clean tillage with machinery; the slow, fuel-consuming nature of burning; and the costly requirement of livestock or fowl for the biological grazing methods. Tillage, still the most widely used method of row-crop weed control, has been greatly improved by development of precision seeding and close preadjustment of tiller tools, allowing the passage of weed knives within an inch or less of the young crop plants. Despite these improvements it is known that weed knives injure crop roots, especially late in the tillage season. And where perennial weeds occur, tillage tools spread these rapidly, bringing about rapid infestation of whole fields.

      Such methods as crop rotation, use of smother crops, use of weedfree seed, mulching and covering, and cleaning of machinery to prevent spread of weed seeds are also classified as mechanical.

Chemical control.

      Chemical weed control (see herbicide) has been used for a very long time: sea salt, industrial by-products, and oils were first employed. Selective control of broad-leaved weeds in fields of cereal crops was discovered in France in the late 1800s, and this practice soon spread throughout Europe. Sulfates and nitrates of copper and iron were used; sulfuric acid proved even more effective. Application was by spraying. Soon sodium arsenite became popular both as a spray and as a soil sterilant. On thousands of miles of railroad right-of-way, and in sugar and rubber plantations in the tropics, this hazardous material was used in tremendous quantities, often resulting in the poisoning of animals and occasionally humans. Diesel oil, as a general herbicide, and sodium dinitrocresylate (Sinox), as a selective plant killer, were introduced during the first three decades of the 20th century.

      Sinox, the first major organic chemical herbicide, was developed in France in 1896. In the late 1940s new herbicides were developed out of the research during World War II, and the era of the miracle weed killers began. Within 20 years over 100 new chemicals were synthesized, developed, and put into use. Chemical weed control superseded both plant-disease and insect-pest control in economic impact. The year 1945 marked the beginning of a new era in chemical weed control. Introduced then were 2,4-D, 2,4,5,-T and IPC, the first two selective as foliar sprays against broad-leaved weeds, the third selective against grass species when applied through the soil. These new organic herbicides were revolutionary in that their high toxicity allowed for effective weed control at dosage rates as low as one to two pounds per acre. This contrasts with carbon bisulfide, borax, and arsenic trioxide, which were required at rates of up to one ton per acre, and with sodium chlorate, required at rates of around 100 pounds per acre.

      Herbicides may be grouped into two categories: selective and nonselective. Each category may be subdivided into foliage-applied and soil-applied materials and, in cases where field crops are treated, the application may be made before sowing the crop (preplanting), after sowing but before emergence of seedlings (pre-emergence), or after seedlings have emerged (postemergence).

      A great advantage of chemical over mechanical weed control is the ease of application. This is particularly true in cereal croplands, pastures, rangelands, forests, and other situations where the airplane can be used. Many millions of acres are treated from the air each year, many under conditions that would not submit to any other method. And modern equipment for treating row-crop land with herbicides is making weed control increasingly convenient. Sprayers, soil incorporation equipment, and spreaders for pelleted herbicides are all adding to the convenience of, and removing uncertainty from, herbicide application. Machinery is available that simultaneously builds up beds, plants the seed, sprays with insecticide, and incorporates fertilizer and pre-emergence herbicide all in one operation. This is extremely popular on the modern mechanized farm.

      A balanced view of recent developments in agriculture, however, includes some of the changes that affect human ecology. Pesticides in general have created problems through their persistence in soils and food chains. While most of these problems revolve around DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons, there has been interest in the possible injurious effects of 2,4,5-T, a herbicide of major importance in forest and range management.

biological control.

      Efforts by man to control weeds biologically are a recent development. An early report from 1902 described the importation of insects from Mexico to Hawaii in an effort to control Lantana, an imported shrubby climbing weed that had spread over thousands of acres of pastureland, rendering them useless for grazing. Work has continued since this early attempt; additional insect species have been introduced, and this plant is slowly yielding to attacks by a number of introduced insects.

       prickly pear cacti have been very effectively controlled in Australia; some 60 million acres (24 million hectares) have been converted from cactus thicket to plowland and pasture by an insect, Cactoblastis cactorum, introduced from Argentina in 1925. By 1933 the major cactus areas were under control.

      The next most successful use of biological weed control was in California, where St. Johnswort, locally called Klamath weed, was subjected to depredation by three insect species in 1945. Release of insects continued for a number of years, the effort being carried to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho by 1950. The insects spread rapidly after introduction, and recent reports indicate that some 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of rangeland have been reclaimed. Two insects of the genus Chrysolina and one of the genus Agrilus have become established, and St. Johnswort is considered to be in a satisfactory state of suppression. Many weed–insect relationships are now under study, and more instances of successful control are being recorded.

      A number of vertebrate animals have been used to control certain specific weeds. sheep and goats (goat) have been employed to control brushy plants on rangelands in many countries. Their effectiveness is evident in parts of the Middle East and Africa where dry range and desert lands have been almost completely denuded by grazing goats. In these cases, however, the destructiveness of the goats far outweighs their usefulness in plant pest control, which indicates the need for rational management in all efforts at weed control.

      Geese have been used to control weeds in cotton fields in California and in mint plantations in Oregon. Certain fishes are useful in keeping aquatic plants under control; examples are the Congo tilapia, the Israeli carp, and the grass carp. The Florida manatee is known to consume many aquatic plants, and the snail Marisa cornuarietis feeds on alligator weed, pondweed, and water hyacinth.

      Although much more desirable than chemical weed control from the standpoint of time-ecological effects, biological weed control has definite limitations. It is ideal for situations such as the cactus infestation in Australia, where a weedy plant was introduced free of its natural predators. There are places where it offers the only hope for coping with serious weed situations, for example, the control of Halogeton, a poisonous plant covering millions of acres of low-value land, and Canada thistle control in the north-central and northwestern United States, where millions of acres of forest, parkland, and agricultural lands are infested. On the other hand, the control by biological methods of many of the common annual weeds that occur in crops is out of the question, because the number and variety of species involved will not submit to safe introduction of suitable predators.

      There are many disadvantages to biological control. Control using insects is limited almost entirely to perennial plants. Few insects can overwinter during the part of the annual cycle of an annual weed when the plant is dead and only seed carry over. Biological control is restricted mainly to weeds of uncultivated areas. The broad spectrum of weed species, the great number of seeds in the soil, and the fact that many weed seeds will live for decades in the soil all militate against success by biological agents in principal annual crops. In these cases cheap and effective herbicides have proved most useful.

      The introduction of alien organisms is hazardous in that these same organisms may become pests in the new habitat. Kikuyu grass, which was introduced into California to prevent soil erosion on hillsides and roadways, soon spread into orchards, turf, and crop areas, where it became a serious weed.

      Biological weed control tends to be only periodically effective. Experience has proved that the weed species, when subjected to control by insects, may be reduced initially to a very low level. The insects then die off for lack of food. Soon the weed recovers or becomes reestablished from seed. The predators then flourish; the weed is reduced and so on, through reciprocal cycles.

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