Eleusine indica Seeds | Goosegrass
LATIN NAME: Eleusine indica
COMMON NAME: Goosegrass
Plant Profile
Goosegrass is the flat, silvery weed of trampled ground, pavements and car parks, and one of the hardest plants in the world to kill. It is native to the Old World tropics and has spread to every warm country, growing in lawns, sports fields, cotton rows, sugarcane and cracks in concrete, always where the ground is compacted and the competition is thin. The plant forms a low rosette of coarse leaves, often with a silvery centre, and sends out three to six finger-like seed spikes from one point, which is why it is also called crowfoot grass. It roots at the nodes where stems touch the ground, and it can set seed within six weeks of germination. Pulling it up usually leaves a piece of root behind, and mowing it only removes the flowers that have already set seed. In arable fields it competes hard with young crops and is now resistant to several herbicides.
Science & Biotechnology
Eleusine indica is an allotetraploid with 36 chromosomes, and one of its genome donors is closely related to finger millet, the African grain crop, which is itself an allotetraploid descended from a cross involving this species. The plant is a C4 grass with a prostrate habit that keeps its growing point below the mower and below the hoe, and its seed spikes are held low and mature quickly, so a population can complete a generation between cultivations. Each plant can produce thousands of seeds, which germinate over a long period rather than all at once, and the seed survives passage through cattle and through compost. Glyphosate resistance was first confirmed in goosegrass in the 2000s and has since appeared in many countries, with some populations also resistant to ACCase and ALS inhibitors. The mechanism is often a target-site mutation, and in some lines the resistance gene is amplified, which makes the plant resistant to doses far above the field rate.
Uses & Benefits
The plant is used as fodder in India and Africa, where it is cut before flowering and fed to cattle, and it is grazed in pastures when young. The seed has been eaten in times of scarcity, parched or ground into flour, though the yield is small and the grain is fiddly. In traditional medicine a decoction of the whole plant is used as a diuretic and for fever, and the root is applied to wounds. It is also a host for several grass viruses and nematodes, which makes it a reservoir for disease in crops. For a gardener its only use is as an indicator: where goosegrass thrives, the soil is compacted and the lawn is thin, and the cure is aeration and better grass growth rather than more weedkiller. It is not a plant to encourage, and it has no ornamental value.
Growing from Seed
It needs no help. Seed germinates at 20 to 30 degrees from spring onwards, and a single plant will produce seed within two months. If you want to grow it for study, sow on the surface of a sandy loam and keep it in full sun; it will flower in six weeks. Control is the real subject: hand-weed young plants before the spikes form, mulch heavily to bury seed, and improve the density of the grass or crop around it so that it has no open ground. In lawns, raise the mowing height in summer and feed to thicken the sward. Rotate herbicides between groups, since resistance is widespread, and remove plants that survive a treatment rather than leaving them to set seed. Never compost plants that are in seed.
Our Take
The flat, tough weed of paths and lawns, with seed heads like a crow’s foot. Easy to grow, very hard to be rid of.
Related Reading
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