One of the neighbors was talking about some people that stopped by to see what kind of cotton another neighbor was growing. The other neighbbor has a bumper crop of Musk Thistle, his field is purple flowers as far as you can see. The blooms are in the fly away stage right now and do look somewhat like cotton from a distance, especially going by at 70+ mph on the Interstate. The inquirers wanted to know if they could gather some seed from this new kind of cotton they hadn't seen before, the neighbor told them "get all you want, the other neighbor won't mind a bit".
a new kind of cotton plants
Is this plant also known as Canadian thistle?We have to fight it here to. Like so many weeds it produces hundreds of seeds in each bloom/seed pod many of which are viable for up to 20 years. So the battle will be a long one which I fear will never be won. All it takes if for one seed pod to develop and go flying away on the breezes to repopulate a large area.
No, these are Musk Thistles, even worse than Canadians. We have pretty much quit on the Canadian Thistles and started fighting the Musk Thistles. Musk Thistles are more compact than CT, they have a thinner stalk and I think grow taller than CT. We try to not let ours grow to full flowering size. If a few go to seed than you have many more the next year.
Two of our neighbors don't cut theirs at all and boy it doesn't take long for them to cover a whole pasture, & yours also if you don't stay after them. Whenever we go down in the field to do anything we take the shovel so we can dig whatever ones we find.
The neighbor that started this thread bush hogged his last year while they were blooming and it looked like it was snowing. We have some of the weevils in the CT and they are pretty well taking care of them. Roundup works well on the CT. The neighbor to the south of us (we own the land now) had a terrible CT problem and they were blowing onto our pasture. One evening I took a huge bottle of roundup and started spraying her field, thank goodness it was a relative or I might have gotten into trouble.
I don't know what kind of shoes you wear, but the children and I pretty well rid a 40 acre pasture of CT by using the heel of our cowboy or Wellington boots to damage the crown just below ground level.
We have milk thisle here as well as the CT. Also lots of Miners Lettuce.
My DH can use his boots but I just hurt my foot, I wear sneakers usually. I don't guess I know what milk thistle & Miners Lettuce are. I'll try to find a picture of Musk Thistle for you.
It sounds like a huge amount of work to rid yourself of that thistle, here in Indiana the farmers have taken to growing corn that is resistant to round up and they spray round up on the crops, this just sounds worrisome to me who is thinking how is it possible to make something resistant to round up?
I have used 2-4 D on Canadian thistles before. My DH won't let me use roundup in the field because it kills the grass also, 2-4 D doesn't. I haven't tried 2-4 D on Musk thistles yet. It seems one pest moves on and you get something worse in its place.
Peggy
I need to do a websearch and see what musk thistle is. I may have it and be calling it a different local name. That happens you know. Even within a community a plant can have several different names.