Weeds - Part 7: Stiltgrass

Some thoughts on weeds at Common Ground Community Garden, Greenwood Lake

Sona Mason - September 2023

The next grass after "crab" is "stilt," and it’s  a tall one—when it wants to be, or rather, when conditions are right. Japanese Stiltgrass can be anything from two to three feet high or down to lawn shorn, and still produce seeds. This explains its vexing presence year after year, when you swore you hunted down every last vestige.

Stiltgrass produces flowers,  hence seeds around the end of August through September. Simply bend the tip and peel back a slightly thickened leaf stalk to reveal developing seeds. A sure-fire way to recognize stiltgrass is the light-green leaves bisected by a silvery midvein. And unlike similar-looking native woodland grasses, it's easy to pull out, as evidenced by its minuscule annual root system. No perennial here!

But why bother,  you may ask? In addition to providing no food value for wildlife  - even deer shun it - it tends to crowd out lower-growing species. All those stalks turn tan in the fall and collapse over and smother other vegetation, like a creepy botanical spider web, remaining thus all winter and even into spring. Stiltgrass is highly invasive and has commandeered large swathes of forest floor in our parks and state forests, thus receiving deserved notoriety among the "undesirables."