Actually I found this weeder tool several years ago when fixing a
water line using a tongue-groove-pliers
and then walking back to the house and seeing thistles along the way
and using those pliers to pull the
thistles.

There is no finer weeder than a large pair of tongue-groove-pliers. A
weed that has a single stem can
be pulled up from its entire roots. Yesterday I used the pliers to
take out baby locust trees the size
of my little finger. Some snapped at the base, but several came out by
their entire roots. And it matters
not if the soil is wet or dry.

They are super effective on thistle.

What makes the pliers so effective is the fact that the grip is tight
and the pulling upwards only tightens the grip
even more.

Thistles are a breeze to pull out by their entire roots. Burdock that
has a single stem is easy. Stinging
nettle is especially vulnerable to the pliers. Some weeds
do not have a single stem and thus they are immune to the pliers.

So if you have a pair of tongue-groove-pliers, not the ordinary pliers
but the tongue-groove, then try it on
your worst weeds who have a central stem. Watch how easy it is to
weed.

P.S. the other day I saw a show on robots for agriculture designed to
weed. Their idea was to spray
some herbicide. But I think some may be able to rig a robot with these
pliers and have a mechanical
means of removing weeds. So if they design a robot weeder running on
solar energy and equipped with
tongue-groove-pliers and whenever it spots a weed with a stalk, then
go for it.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

thistles are the wrong object to prove the effectiveness of the
recommended tongue-groove-plier, as they are extremely vulnerable to any
disturbance, the weak root endings are not able to re-establish for
moisture collecting

I would rather recommend you to try your experiments on canadian
goldenrod, momentarily the greatest pest here in central Europe - even
the smallest root piece can re-grow to a new plant, thousandfold - you
just could say "callus differentiation"

cheers kauhl

kauhl-meersburg wrote:
thistles are the wrong object to prove the effectiveness of the
recommended tongue-groove-plier, as they are extremely vulnerable to any
disturbance, the weak root endings are not able to re-establish for
moisture collecting

I would rather recommend you to try your experiments on canadian
goldenrod, momentarily the greatest pest here in central Europe - even
the smallest root piece can re-grow to a new plant, thousandfold - you
just could say "callus differentiation"

cheers kauhl

Will give it a try. First have to identify it.

try your experiments on canadian
goldenrod, momentarily the greatest pest here in central Europe - even
the smallest root piece can re-grow to a new plant, thousandfold - you
just could say "callus differentiation"

Will give it a try. First have to identify it

you can't oversee them, start flowering in the moment:

flowerheads golden-yellow, each with 10 - 17 short rays, in broad
pyramidal panicles, and thoroughly covering vast semi-dry sunny areas
and dominating all other plants

.... and keep in mind, all thistles are bi-annual: when you cut them
before ripening they cannot subsist

I am beekeeper with some other hobbies, have a look at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71092423@N00/

cheers

kauhl-meersburg wrote:

you can't oversee them, start flowering in the moment:

For me, the identification of weeds is not of high priority, only when
they catch my screaming
attention do I try to identify. I consider all weeds as compost for my
mower and so I am not
taken aback by any weed, unless they require more time than mowing.



flowerheads golden-yellow, each with 10 - 17 short rays, in broad
pyramidal panicles, and thoroughly covering vast semi-dry sunny areas
and dominating all other plants


Well I do have a pernicious weed that is multiplying and I thought it
was
some form of field-pennycress for it has the same upright structure
and
the same sort of leaves.

But looking in my weed-manual I see the flower and seed are not
pennycress.
However, looking at my weed-manual on Canadian Goldenrod I see
serrated leaves
and this pernicious accelerating weed in my field has a smooth edge
but its
flower top does look like the illustration. So I guess this weed is
the Canadian
Goldenrod even though it has no serrated leaf edges.

Might there be another weed that looks like Goldenrod whose leaf edges
are smooth.

Come to think of it, the flower structure was on a few specimens whose
leaves were gone
and whose stalk was brown as well as the numerous seeds. So maybe
these few specimens
were Goldenrod, only I could no longer see any leaves. And that the
other weed which is
hundreds of times more abundant is a different weed that looks like
goldenrod.

Question: Is there another weed with smooth leaves that looks like
Goldenrod?

I found all three easy to pull out with bare hands that it was a waste
of time using the pliers. In
fact the abundant weed is so easy to clear out by pulling that they
are as easy as stinging nettle
provided I do not get stung.

Now I see all three-- nettle, goldenrod and what looks like goldenrod
in the horse pasture. So the
horse does not care to eat any one of those three. However, I see none
of those three in the Llama
pasture. Apparently the Llama will eat them up, the nettle in last
resort. Apparently the nettle does not
sting the Llama.

Sidenote: I used to think the horse loved apples and the Llama only
mildly liked apples but now a days
the Llama has become an even greater fan of apples than the horse. For
he follows me everywhere
thinking I have one more apple in my pocket.



... and keep in mind, all thistles are bi-annual: when you cut them
before ripening they cannot subsist


Yes, a few years back I had a thistle patch near the roadway and spent
a few days cutting them
out, and ever since that patch has disappeared. So thistle is not a
big problem. However, the "curly
dock" is a worse problem for me since both Llama and horse never eat
any. Both Llama and horse
eat thistle.

So is this smooth leafed weed of the same looks as goldenrod only its
leaf is smooth and not serrated,
is it Canadian Goldenrod? If it is, then it is a major problem on my
land.

I am beekeeper with some other hobbies, have a look at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71092423@N00/

cheers

Alright, will look at that picture after I post this, and should have
looked before but have too much time
invested in this post already, so will look at the picture after this
post.

I am thinking that I have a different weed that looks like Goldenrod
which is far more abundant.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

kauhl-meersburg wrote:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/71092423@N00/

cheers

I see mostly hornets and wasps here. No goldenrod.

Recently I asked a question based on repeated observation that spiders
tend to move in where wasps have their hive. Wolf spiders and orb
spiders.
The question was whether the spiders benefited the wasps? Is there
some
commensalism going on between spiders and wasps?

wrote:
kauhl-meersburg wrote:

you can't oversee them, start flowering in the moment:

Okay, I think I spotted about a dozen weeds that look like Goldenrod
for today, but all their leaves were gone
and had only a brown stalk with flower seed head remaining. Hand
pulled them out with no problem.

What problem I do have is another weed that looks somewhat like
Canadian Goldenrod except that
the leaves are smooth and not serrated. And can grow higher than 6
feet as I witnessed some near the
outbuilding. They can grow as high as the stinging nettle.

So I looked through the weed manual and about the only weed that looks
close to this abundant
one is yellow-toadflax. However these abundant weeds are more often
having a single stem.

I have a hard time of identifying weeds from a picture in a book.
About the only thing that really seems
to work is the height. It says that Goldenrod and Toadflax grows to be
1 to 2 feet. So that eliminates those
two as the abundant culprit in my field.

I looked at pennycress and it grows to be 8 dm tall. Trouble is I do
not know what they meant by "dm".
Is it some form of meter?

So if Goldenrod and toadflax grows to be 1 to 2 feet tall, then they
are not the weed that is abundant.

I think the problem with my books on weeds is that they are hand drawn
pictures and thus never an
accurate picture of the weed in full.

I have a small brochure of South Dakota noxious weeds where they have
taken a color photo. I think the
future trend should be away from these hand drawings (I see no need
for this practice in our modern world
where color photos are available). And this brochure is limited but on
the page showing Purple Loosestrife
if it were a single stem and where the flower was yellow, and since it
reaches 8 feet tall, would be the
best bet of what weed is flourishing in my pasture. The horse never
eats it.

Now my curiousity is peaked so I will have to find out what this weed
is.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies


Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

hello Archi,


heart affecting your description of your endeavours in determining
flowers, I know those difficulties also very well, as at the beginning
one has not yet an eye for those small differencies in flowerhead
composition and one always refuses to read those written dry listings of
flower characteristics

so at first you should develop an impression of families:

goldenrod = compositae
pennycress = cruciferae
curled dock = polygonaceae
stinging nettle = urticaceae
toad-flax = scrophulariaceae
loose-strive = primulaceae

all with their individual details - and don't throw those hand drawn
guides away, they are much more better than photos, because you see the
plant in its uniqueness - you should rather procure a field guide nearly
complete, the mine has about 2000 drawings

btw. "dm" means dezimeter = 10 centimeters = 1/3 foot

concerning your question for a subspecies of goldenrod I am not familiar
with it, but I had a look on wikipedia "goldenrod" with about 10
subspecies

what about publishing a photo of your Llamas and horses, e.g. under
alt.binaries.pictures.animals

cheers kauhl

kauhl-meersburg wrote:
hello Archi,


heart affecting your description of your endeavours in determining
flowers, I know those difficulties also very well, as at the beginning
one has not yet an eye for those small differencies in flowerhead
composition and one always refuses to read those written dry listings of
flower characteristics

so at first you should develop an impression of families:

goldenrod = compositae
pennycress = cruciferae
curled dock = polygonaceae
stinging nettle = urticaceae
toad-flax = scrophulariaceae
loose-strive = primulaceae

all with their individual details - and don't throw those hand drawn
guides away, they are much more better than photos, because you see the
plant in its uniqueness - you should rather procure a field guide nearly
complete, the mine has about 2000 drawings

btw. "dm" means dezimeter = 10 centimeters = 1/3 foot

concerning your question for a subspecies of goldenrod I am not familiar
with it, but I had a look on wikipedia "goldenrod" with about 10
subspecies

what about publishing a photo of your Llamas and horses, e.g. under
alt.binaries.pictures.animals

cheers kauhl

Cheers, it is called Fleabane or Horseweed. Conyza canadensis

Had a friend help me to identify.

The feature that gives it away is the size it can grow. Goldenrod only
gets 2 feet tall
but this Fleabane can get 6 feet tall.

So I think alot of these weed identity books are sorely lacking in a
vital data of size.

But worst of all, old weed manuals should provide more than an artist
sketch. In the days of
modern photography of color pictures, a weed manual should have artist
sketch of details, but
should always have a crisp clear color photo of the weed. I could have
spent alot of time looking
at all those artist sketches and never have said "that weed is
fleabane". But if my manuals had a
color photo of the weeds, I probably would have solved the mystery
without having to ask my friend.

In my pastures, I have about less than ten goldenrod weeds that I
could spot, but within those pastures
was probably thousands, perhaps hundred thousand fleabane.

Manual says fleabane has terepene chemicals so the horse will not
touch them. But I do not remember
seeing any fleabane where the Llama is pastured. So will have to check
on that issue to see if the Llama
eats fleabane. It maybe I just did not look close enough.

Sorry, I do not have time for photos to the Internet, for I have a
tough enough schedule as is.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies

Cheers, it is called Fleabane or Horseweed. Conyza canadensis

thank you for revealing - in Europe it's called erigeron canadensis, but
flower color greyish blue and the long panicle with single flowerheads,
not in long spikes -

so you still have a chance to experiment on goldenrod with your plier

cheers

kauhl-meersburg wrote:
Cheers, it is called Fleabane or Horseweed. Conyza canadensis

thank you for revealing - in Europe it's called erigeron canadensis, but
flower color greyish blue and the long panicle with single flowerheads,
not in long spikes -

so you still have a chance to experiment on goldenrod with your plier

cheers

Found a patch of goldenrod and they are a bit more difficult than
horseweed
which is best done bare hand pulling. With goldenrod they are best
done bare
hand after a rain shower. Pliers are too much and often break at
ground level
without getting any roots. When the ground is moist with rain, all
weeds are
easier.

I tried the pliers, remember these are tongue-groove pliers, not the
usual plier, and
tried the pliers on milkweed and they pulled out in a breeze. But it
is the thistles that
the pliers are the best.