Spring Whitlow Grass

This little plant is rather amazing as I have been clearing from one of the gardens where it grows. First of all it flowers really early in the spring and it also grows in sand and compacted areas where other plants don’t do all that great. The other interesting feature is the size differences, some will grow so very tiny you can hardly see them. In the above picture even that smaller plant to the right is pretty large compared to some I’ve been weeding. So this annual is very efficient at turning whatever energy it can into seeds! Imagine the past week I’ve hand weeded one by one a five gallon bucket of these little buggers.

I know the next picture is repeating the one above, but this is a temporary place holder for this page until I can get another weed picture taken I want to put here instead. :)

Little White Flower - May 9 2018 (1082K)

Purslane

Being able to recognize weed seeds is useful, but what happens when they get so small? A good camera with a macro zoom lens can help make things more visible to your eyes if you don’t happen to have good enough vision or a magnifying glass handy.

In the case of purslane the seeds (and the empty caps nearby) are distinctive enough that I can now see them on the ground when I’m weeding if I’ve happened to have left the weed so long that it can flower and then drop seeds. In this picture the four dark seeds in a line make it easy to see them.

Purslane Seeds - Oct 8 2021 (4086K)

Carpet Weed

For some other small flowering weed seeds that I pulled at the same time I weeded out the Purslane it could be either or both of the Carpet Weed or the Thyme-leaved Spurge, but I can’t be sure which since both were mixed together. As they are even smaller than the Purslane seeds I’m not sure I could see those on the ground or not. From looking at pictures it looks like most of the smaller weed seeds in this picture are from the Carpet Weed. Either way they are both very prolific seed producers if left to go so I try to remove them both before they can drop seeds. In this picture the seeds are very hard to see as they are brown instead of darker plus they are smaller than the Purslane seeds.

Other Seeds - Oct 8 2021 (3812K)