Just Look For It: Horseweed

Once you recognize it, it is everywhere!

I have one purpose here: to cause a single reader to discover a common plant growing right outside their back door, right under there noses, but never noticed. And certainly never named or known.

If a single one of you tells me “YES! After learning about this native plant and actively LOOKING for it, I have seen it. And it is everywhere!” I will consider my small efforts here to have been successful.

The plant is HORSEWEED. Conyza canadensis (formerly genus Erigeron—the fleabanes.)

• It has many common names

• It has tremendous reproductive potential

• It has become a serious herbicide-resistant pest in food crops, especially no-till

• It has spread from Canada to China and Europe, with which North America has shared a native-become-invasive

• Horseweed has been used as herb and medicine. Crush and sniff the leaves for a tarragon-like aroma.

• Its stems can be used to start a fire [I plan to see if I can make this work and will let you see the blisters on my hands afterwards.]

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  Below are images of the plant in its basal rosette form seen very early in the spring, followed by a couple of 8 foots specimens growing near the Generac here at the house. You will gain an appreciation for the ability of this plant to spread its dandelion-like floating seeds across distances.

  
  And lastly, as testament to my late-onset laziness and knowledge that few readers click links provided, I bundled my unprocessed notes (mostly cut and pasted from the web) in a screenshot of related horseweed info in OneNote. You can search out anything that interests you from there.

And if you “discover” horseweed after reading this, please let me know, and I will consider the two cups of coffee it took me to create this post well worth the trips to the kitchen in the wee hours. — fred

This is the flowering tops of three 7-foot-tall horseweed plants caught just before seed maturity.

Look carefully to see tubular inflorescences including those already open to expose the wind-blown floating dandelion-like seeds

You might be interested in seeing how horseweed “stems” can be used to hand-drill a fire. Go to 3:45 for the fire-starting part, though there is no fire, just the motions involved.