Teasel added to county's noxious weed list

Common and cut-leaf teasel are now considered noxious weeds here following action taken by the Jackson County Commissioners on Monday.

On the recommendation of Scott Kieffaber, public works director, the commissioners approved a motion 3-0 to add common teasel and cut-leaf teasel to the list of current noxious weeds in the county. 

Teasel was previously an optional noxious weed for counties, Kieffaber said, but it’s becoming a bigger issue here now. 

“It’s worse than thistles, and it can get up to 10-feet tall,” Kieffaber said.

Now that it’s considered a noxious weed, the county can send out letters to landowners where teasel is present, inform the landowners about the teasel and ask them to eradicate it with herbicide they can purchase, at cost, from the county, in order to stop the weed from spreading and becoming invasive.

Kieffaber said that, in the early stages, teasel can be killed with 2,4-D.

Common and cut-leaf teasel can grow up to 10-feet tall and generally has dense, egg-shaped flower heads that grow individually at the tops of the leafless stems. The color of the flowers vary from pale purple to dark purple and white, it was reported. 

Other weeds deemed noxious in Jackson County include sericea lespedeza, musk thistle, Johnson grass, field bindweed, burr ragweed, leafy spurge, Russian knapweed, hoary cress, Canada thistle, kudzu, pignut and quack grass.

For more on this and other stories, please log in to your holtonrecorder.net account and select “March 1, 2023” under “E-Editions.”