Russian Knapweed    by Tom Heald    airs January 11, 2009        1:41 long

If you are a landowner chances are you have done weed control on your property.  Well there is a special class of weeds that are so bad they are called noxious weeds and the one in particular I’m going to talk to you today about is called Russian Knapweed like the study shows behind me.

Russian Knapweed is native to the Asian continent.  But it has found its true calling here in the North American West where hundreds of thousands of acres are being impacted by this one plant.

What makes this plant so vile is that A, it has such a deep tap root system it can survive extraordinary times of drought.  But as the leaves fall off and collect on the soil surface it creates a zinc barrier so toxic that other plants cannot live there.  And the other thing is that it displaces all of our native vegetation.

Now the other thing about Russian Knapweed is that animals find this truly unpalatable.  And in fact with horses they can become very very sick by eating too much Russian Knapweed.

Now folks like the University of Wyoming have a vested interest in researching this.  They want to kill it but bring back the natural vegetation.  That is why you see these strip spots throughout here because we are using different kinds of chemistry to try to control this thing and to bring back the natural vegetation.

Sometimes exploring the nature of Wyoming has a noxious side to it.  This has been Tom Heald for the University of Wyoming cooperative extension service exploring the nature of Wyoming.