Released: November 19, 2003

Quail, Cattle Not Big Culprits in Sericea Lespedeza’s Spread

MANHATTAN, Kan. – They’ll eat it. But neither quail nor cattle seem to be major culprits in the spread of prairie-choking sericea lespedeza (Chinese bush clover), according to Kansas State University agronomist Carolyn Blocksome and wildlife expert Charles Lee.

Kansas listed the perennial legume as a noxious weed July 1, 2000 – making it the first federally recognized crop that’s also a designated noxious weed.

Kansas’ sericea-related county noxious weed control efforts were close to zero in the late 1980s. Last year, however, control efforts affected 70 counties and close to 700,000 acres – about twice the land reported just five years earlier. The weed invasion was strongest in the east, but spreading west, as well as into Nebraska.

“When mature, sericea lespedeza is a large, strong plant competitor. But it develops from a rather weak seedling. And its seeds have a low germination rate, because they must be scarified before they’ll grow,” said Lee, who is K-State Research and Extension’s wildlife damage control specialist. “Our research was to determine whether being eaten by cattle or quail was providing the needed seed scarification and thus helping the seed germinate.”

Blocksome and Lee had an ideal location in the Ft. Riley military base near Junction City, Kan. The base has a large quail population. Although its personnel are actively trying to control the plant, Ft. Riley also has a substantial crop of sericea lespedeza, due to planting efforts in the 1950s (when the weed/legume was still considered a good livestock forage and wildlife habitat crop for poor soils).

The K-State research team confined both cattle and quail and then fed them sericea seeds. After that, the team collected the animals’ fecal material, washed it, recovered the seeds and tested those expelled seeds’ germination rate.

The researchers found that cattle digestion has minimal effect on sericea lespedeza seed germination. Quail digestion significantly increases the seeds’ germination rate, but few seeds pass through quail in tact.

“That’s only part of the equation, though. In Kansas, sericea’s high tannin content, when mature, makes it unpalatable for cattle. Quail will use the plant for cover and roosting. Until this study, however, we did not know if quail preferred the seed over other available foods,” Lee said.

That’s why another part of the study examined 50 quail gullets, collected by hunters on Ft. Riley in 2002. The final result: The birds’ gullets yielded few of the noxious weed seeds.

“Voluntary consumption by quail appears to be rare on Ft. Riley. So, it seems unlikely that quail are responsible for the regional spread of sericea lespedeza,” he said.

Sericea lespedeza has been in the southeastern United States since 1896, according to K-State agronomist Walter Fick. The hardy legume was planted on strip-mined land in Missouri and southeast Kansas during the 1930s. Kansas wildlife habitat plantings around state and federal reservoirs continued from the 1940s through the 1970s. Sericea lespedeza was used in Soil Bank Program plantings and pasture improvements in the 1950s. Native grass plantings established under the Conservation Reserve Program, a provision of the 1985 farm bill, often contained sericea lespedeza seed, too.

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K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus, Manhattan.

Story by:
Kathleen Ward, Communications Specialist
kward@oznet.ksu.edu
K-State Research& Extension News