Having a hard time telling these small plants apart? Us too! But this is often the stage when ID is most helpful. In the spring, a lot of plants are in rosette form, a clump of vegetation with no stalk. How to tell what’s in your field now, when you are planning weed management?
We’ve added a page just for this problem: Rosette Forming Weeds of Early Spring. We hope it will help you sort out your spring weeds. For assistance with management of the various species, please see Cornell’s crop and pest management guides and the references listed in the page.
PS – the photos above, starting from the left, are: horseweed, shepherd’s purse, Canada goldenrod, Virginia pepperweed, and common mullein. All photos by the Ohio State Weed Lab of Ohio Sate University except for shepherd’s purse (Steve Dewey of the Utah State University), Canada goldenrod (Michigan State University), and Virginia pepperweed (Joseph DiTomaso of the University of California at Davis). All photos available on bugwood.org.