Aquilegia is a genus of about 60–70 species of perennial plants that are found in meadows, woodlands, and at higher altitudes throughout the Northern Hemisphere, known for the spurred petals of their flowers.
Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials.
Weed control is a type of pest control, which attempts to stop or reduce growth of weeds, especially noxious weeds, with the aim of reducing their competition with desired flora and fauna including domesticated plants and livestock, and in natural settings preventing non native species competing with native species.
Poa pratensis, commonly known as Kentucky bluegrass, smooth meadow-grass, or common meadow-grass, is a perennial species of grass native to practically all of Europe, North Asia and the mountains of Algeria and Morocco. It is a common and incredibly popular lawn grass in North America with the species being spread over all of the cool, humid parts of the United States, despite the fact that it is not native to North America. The Spanish Empire brought the seeds of Kentucky bluegrass to the New World in mixtures with other grasses. In its native range, Poa pratensis forms a valuable pasture plant, characteristic of well-drained, fertile soil. It is also used for making lawns in parks and gardens and has established itself as a common invasive weed across cool moist temperate climates like the Pacific Northwest and the Northeastern United States. When found on native grasslands in Canada, for example, it is considered an unwelcome exotic plant, and is indicative of a disturbed and degraded landscape.
Trifolium repens, the white clover, is a herbaceous perennial plant in the bean family Fabaceae. It is native to Europe, including the British Isles, and central Asia and is one of the most widely cultivated types of clover. It has been widely introduced worldwide as a forage crop, and is now also common in most grassy areas of North America, Australia and New Zealand. The species includes varieties often classed as small, intermediate and large, according to height, which reflects petiole length. The term 'white clover' is applied to the species in general, 'Dutch clover' is often applied to intermediate varieties, and 'ladino clover' is applied to large varieties.
Lolium is a genus of tufted grasses in the bluegrass subfamily (Pooideae). It is often called ryegrass, but this term is sometimes used to refer to grasses in other genera.
Lolium perenne, common name perennial ryegrass, English ryegrass, winter ryegrass, or ray grass, is a grass from the family Poaceae. It is native to Europe, Asia and northern Africa, but is widely cultivated and naturalised around the world.
Eupatorium cannabinum, commonly known as hemp-agrimony, or holy rope, is a herbaceous plant in the family Asteraceae. It is a robust perennial native to Europe, NW. Africa, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is cultivated as an ornamental and occasionally found as a garden escape in scattered locations in China, the United States and Canada. It is extremely attractive to butterflies, much like buddleia.
Abacarus hystrix, the cereal rust mite or grain rust mite, belongs to the family Eriophyidae. They are extremely small with adults measuring up to 1 millimetre in length and only have four legs at the front of the body. Viewing by the human eye requires a 10 – 20X lens. The adult mites are usually yellow but also have been seen to be white or orange. The cereal rust mite was first found on Elymus repens, a very common perennial grass species. It has now been found on more than 60 grass species including oats, barley, wheat and ryegrass, found in Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia. Mites migrate primarily through wind movement and are usually found on the highest basal sections of the top two leaf blades. Abacarus hystrix produces up to twenty overlapping generations per year in South Australian perennial pastures, indicating that the species breeds quite rapidly. It has been noted that the cereal rust mite can cause losses in yield of up to 30-70%.
Drechslera is a genus of fungi. Many of the species in this genus are plant pathogens.
Lolium multiflorum is a ryegrass native to temperate Europe, though its precise native range is unknown.
Ergovaline is an ergopeptine and one of the ergot alkaloids. It is usually found in endophyte-infected species of grass like Tall fescue or Perennial Ryegrass. It is toxic to cattle feeding on infected grass, probably because it acts as a vasoconstrictor.
The Carlemanniaceae are a tropical East Asian and Southeast Asian family of subshrub to herbaceous perennial flowering plants with 2 genera. Older systems of plant taxonomy place the two genera, Carlemannia, and Silvianthus within the Caprifoliaceae or the Rubiaceae. The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification of 2003 places the group in the Lamiales, as a plant family more closely related to the Oleaceae than to the Caprifoliaceae.
Rhus chinensis, the Chinese sumac or nutgall tree, is a deciduous shrub or small tree in the genus Rhus. Growing to 6 m (20 ft) tall, it has downy shoots and leaves comprising several leaflets. These turn red in autumn before falling.
Festuca gigantea, or giant fescue, is a plant species in the grass family, Poaceae. Because this and other members of Festuca subgenus Schedonorus have more in common morphologically with members of the genus Lolium than with Festuca and often produce fertile hybrids with other Lolium species, Festuca gigantea has been recently published as Lolium giganteum(L.) Darbysh. (1993) and then as Schedonorus giganteus(L.) Holub (1998). Sources vary as to which placement is more acceptable.
Perennial ryegrass staggers is poisoning by peramine, lolitrem B, and other toxins that are contained in perennial ryegrass, and produced by the endophyte fungus Epichloë festucae which can be present in all parts of the grass plant, but tends to be concentrated in the lower part of the leaf sheaths, the flower stalks and seeds. This condition can affect horses, cattle, sheep, farmed deer and llamas. It regularly occurs in New Zealand and is known spasmodically from Australia, North and South America, and Europe.
Listronotus bonariensis is a species of weevil that is native to South America and is commonly known as the Argentine stem weevil. It is a pest of grasses and cereals, with the larvae being more destructive than the adult insects. It has spread to Australia and New Zealand, where it is regarded as a pest species.
Lolitrem B is one of many toxins produced by a fungus called Epichloë festucae var. lolii), which grows in Lolium perenne. The fungus is symbiotic with the ryegrass; it doesn't harm the plant, and the toxins it produces kill insects that feed on ryegrass. Lolitrem B is one of these toxins, but it is also harmful to mammals. The shoots and flowers of infected ryegrass have especially high concentrations of lolitrem B, and when livestock eat too much of them, they get perennial ryegrass staggers. At low doses the animals have tremors, and at higher doses they stagger, and at higher yet doses the animals become paralyzed and die. The blood pressure of the animals also goes up. The effect of the lolitrem B comes on slowly and fades out slowly, as it is stored in fat after the ryegrass is eaten. The condition is especially common in New Zealand and Australia, and plant breeders there have been trying to develop strains of fungus that produce toxins only harmful to pests, and not to mammals.
Epichloë hybrida is a systemic, asexual and seed-transmissible endophyte of perennial ryegrass within the genus Epichloë. An interspecies allopolyploid of two haploid parent species Epichloë typhina and Epichloë festucae var. lolii, E. hybrida was first identified in 1989, recognized as an interspecific hybrid in 1994, but only formally named in 2017. Previously this species was often informally called Epichloë typhina x Epichloë festucae var. lolii, or referenced by the identifier of its most well-studied strain, Lp1. Epichloë hybrida is a symbiont of perennial ryegrass where its presence is almost entirely asymptomatic. The species has been commercialized for the benefits of its anti-insect compounds in a pasture setting, although it is now more commonly used as an experimental model system for studying interspecific hybridization in fungi.
A pasture wedge graph or feed wedge is a farm management tool used by dairy farmers for the purposes of managing pasture. It takes the form of a bar graph, that shows the amount of feed available in a pasture over time, and is therefore shaped as a declining wedge.
