Get to know what plants look like as sprouts and you’ll know whether to discard or defend these tiny plants.
Sparse fall and winter rain germinated this year’s crop of winter weeds, wildflowers and other beneficial plants like trees. And at this time of year, it’s hard to tell the difference between the good and the bad.
But if you get familiar with what plants look like as sprouts, you’ll know whether to discard or defend these tiny plants. Here are some common sprouts you might see and tips on how to recognize them.
Sometimes a sprout will still have the seed attached or nearby. If you know how to identify seeds this will be a big help.
Sitting in the center of hackberry “berry” is a spherical stone that splits into two neat hemispheres when the seed sprouts. If you can find them still attached or nearby it’s a good hint you’ve found a hackberry sprout. |
Firewheel flowers turn into clusters of spikey seeds; in the photo above a firewheel sprout emerges from one of the seeds in just such a cluster. |
Grass sprouts pretty much all look the same, but this rescue grass sprout that I pulled up still has a bract from the spikelet attached. |
The first leaves that emerge from seed are called cotyledons. Recognizing sprouts by these can give you a big head start on plant identification.
Hackberry cotyledons have a distinctive notch in their tips. |
Anacua cotyledons are small and covered in fine hair. |
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Plants in the Mallow family tend to have heart-shaped cotyledons. Annual winecup cotyledons are on long petioles (the little stems), when compared to those of three-lobed false mallow. |
Like other plants in the carrot family, the cotyledons of Torilis are long and narrow. It’s true leaves are delicate and frilly compared to the sunflower sprout at lower left. |
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The spring wildflower, false dayflower, looks like grass at first, but the leaves are slightly succulent, and all come from the base of the plant. For contrast, the leaves of weed grasses (like the rescue grass at left) will be produced further up the stem as they grow taller. |
The cotyledons of gallium/bedstraw are large, round and quickly surmounted by square, Velcro-like stems that stick to nearly anything. |
Like gallium, sow thistle cotyledons are big and round, but the first true leaves have visible prickles along their margins making identification easier once they’re a little older. |
