If it isn?t one thing, it is another, right? It seems like the crop protection battle just never ends. Once we get a handle on one thing, two more issues pop up. In the world of weeds, we focus on a few major players: Lambsquarter, Pigweed, Waterhemp, and the list goes on. Some of these weeds are more stubborn than others and make it a challenge to get them out of our fields.
One such weed is not native to our side of the globe and hasn?t shown up often enough for us to get a handle on it; that?s Asian Copperleaf. Meghan Anderson of Iowa State University Extension says that for everything we do know, there?s more that we don?t.
We have only seen it twice before. Its first appearance came in 2016 in Blackhawk County. In 2018, it popped up near Humboldt, IA. Now, we are seeing it in Grundy County. Anderson tells us how to identify it.
As Anderson says, they do know it has some resistance to some herbicides. However, we don?t have enough to know how these Iowa plants have adapted, or even if they have resistance. Right now they are dead from the environment and the timeline, so it?s not easy to study them.
If you suspect you have found Asian Cloverleaf in your field, Anderson says the first step is to contact the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship Entomology Department. They will take you through the next steps.
