Feathertop Rhodes grass is a really quickly growing weed.
It will emerge after only two days of moisture and then its growth rate's quite quick.
Quite small, light, fluffy seeds, most of them will land close to the parent plant.
Those seeds do have a dormancy so it's between six and 10 weeks, but after that period of
time, if the temperature's right and if the moisture is right, you can get a large flush
of emergence from those seeds that have been dispersed.
Another characteristic of feathertop Rhodes grass that makes it a particularly problematic
weed is that it's difficult to control with herbicides.
Now there's two different aspects on that, the first one is it grows very quickly, so
with any weed species the larger the plant, the more difficult it is to control you just
don't get enough herbicide into it.
Second aspect is it stresses very quickly because it's a summer weed, it's in hot, dry
summer conditions it then makes it very difficult to control with herbicides.
In the seedling state, feathertop Rhodes grass can be identified by its flattened stem.
When it's very small and you may have something like barnyard grass or windmill grass, all
in the same population, it can be difficult to distinguish but once it gets to probably
about a three to five centimetre stage, it has quite a predominant flattening of the
stem.
Feathertop Rhodes grass prefers to germinate above about 25 degrees celsius up to about
35 degrees.
It does need moisture for only about two to three days for germination.
In summer, if you're getting rainfall over a couple of days and if it's enough to keep
the soil moist, you'll get a flush of emergence.
The seed of feathertop Rhodes grass is fairly short lived in the soil so it's one of those
weaknesses that we can really take advantage of.
Seed that's on the soil surface, most of it's gone after 12 months and the good thing is
seed that's buried most of that is also gone after 12 months.
So if you can stop seed set and replenishment of that soil seed bank for 12 months, you
should be able to get onto the feathertop problem quite quickly.
Herbicides still remain a critical component of managing feathertop Rhodes grass, but the
key to effective herbicide application or use on this species is to apply it to small
plants.
Once you get to the tillering stage, the efficacy of any herbicide treatment whether that's
applied alone, in mixture or as a double knock, that efficacy drops off once you get to the
tillering stage with feathertop Rhodes grass.
Once feathertop Rhodes grass has gone beyond the tillering stage, herbicides are really
quite ineffective in its control therefore you have to resort to things like hand removal
or chipping which is an approach that can be used if you've got a low density of feathertop
in your fallow.
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