Weed Library

Common Weeds

This visual weed library aims to equip farmers with the information to identify common arable and livestock weeds. Weeds can make production expensive because:

They compete with crops for resources like water, soil nutrients, air and sunlight.
They often hide or host crop pests such as aphids and pathogens such a rusts.
Can degrade land by making the soil infertile by their heavy and fast feeding habits.
They degrade the end product of crops such as rice making post harvest activities very expensive.
Some weeds are noxious, irritant such as (Stinging nettle/Thabai) or poisonous to livestock or human beings after ingestion such as datura.
Other weeds destroy farm infrastructure like drainage channels, water canals like the Mwea irrigation scheme and the azolla plant that blocks water ways.

We encourage you to use this weed library together with our Weed Management segment in our knowledge hub that explains different weeds in details.

Devil's hair/Dodder (Cuscuta Spp)

Invasive parasitic weed for a wide range of plants.

Only controlled by destroying the entire infested plant, hence a very destructive weed.

Common Purslane (Portulaca oleracea)

A fast growing annual weed with a wide variety of growth conditions tolerating drought very well.

Grows from both seeds and stems and seeds remain viable for decades.

An edible plant used as food and as medicine for ages.

Silver leaf Desmodium (Desmodium uncinatum,)

A pasture plant well known for its high crude protein content (avg of 15%) benefiting lactating animals such as dairy cows.

A persistent perennial weed in arable farms that grows through seeds and stems (only when there is enough moisture).

Used in the push-pull technology to control pests in maize. A well known nitrogen fixing plant

Gallant soldier (Galinsoga parviflora)

An arable weed of many crops with rapid production. It has the ability to reproduce rapidly by seed, going through several generations in one year hence a weed of economic importance due to raising production costs.

Edible to both human and livestock especially rabbits.

Double Thorn (Oxygonum sinuatum)

An annual arable weed known for its prickly fruits (double thorn) that make hand weeding difficult and painful.

Effectively controlled through weeding before fruits form.

Leaves are edible and roots of the plant have medicinal value.

Bicolor Button head (Dichrocephala integrifolia)

An annual weed that flowers mainly throughout the year making it a difficult weed to control due to fast reproduction.

Flowers have medicinal properties.

Thorn Apple (Datura stramonium)

An annual herb or herbaceous perennial weed of arable lands. Datura flowers are significant as they support nocturnal moths, the adult stage of some of the devastating larvae in agriculture.

The plant is toxic to both livestock and human beings. For human beings it is used as a hallucinogenic.

The plant is best controlled by complete uprooting BEFORE IT FLOWERS and the flowers mature to fruits which produce numerous seeds. Complete uprooting is recommended as the stem may regenerate roots and continue growing.

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