UC Cooperative Extension Lassen County farm advisor Rob Wilson will take ranchers on a tour Thursday of a ranch two miles south of Likely, Calif., to see medusahead control trials. Wilson will show a variety of methods for restoring rangeland where the agressive and invasive non-native annual grass medusahead is growing. According to the USDA, medusahead is native to the Mediterranean region and was probably introduced to the western U.S. accidentally as a seed contaminant. Wilson will go over trials involving a new herbicide "Matrix" for selective medusahead and downy brome control in sagebrush/perennial grass communities and low rates of Roundup for medusahead control.
According to a UC Delivers impact article by UCCE Mendocino County farm advisor Morgan Doran, medusahead is growing on more than a million acres of grassland, oak woodland and chaparral shrubland in California. "The presence of medusahead can reduce the land's livestock carrying capacity by as much as 75 percent," Doran wrote. Doran has studied the use of intensive grazing and mowing to control medusahead. As a result of Doran's research, the practice of using livestock for controlling medusahead and other noxious weeds is being tested by rangeland managers and ranchers throughout California.
