Aaaaugh! Turn slowly and walk away.
Or dig with all your might. They look horrible!
Kinda like structured nematodes.
Well have you tried them sauteed with a little oil, garlic and balsamic vinegar? Maybe there's an up side to them.

Guess what, Felix? Florida betony is EDIBLE! You clean it, chill it and slice it up in salads like a radish, which is kind of how it tastes! I've never had any quite as large as the ones in the pictures, but they are crispy little additions to your salad bar. Give 'em a try!

Now I am telling YOU about something wild you can eat! Haha!

Marcia

Toss this into that major crisis thread then.
Another one to eat.

Now that is an incentive to weed. Wow,I'll never go hungry!!

Felix

I was hoping that was what I am trying to id. But it's not.

I have a "grass" that was in with the cheap sod the builder supplied me with that has a rattler like that, but a grass like top portion. Any ideas? I can't kill the stuff. Even when I put down the newspaper, the rattler portion waits underground for the newspaper to start to break down and then send up new grass shoots right through the newspaper. When I make a new bed I spend hours having to dig that stuff up.

katkin,
is it yellow-green grass? does it smell kinda sharp & strange, but not unpleasant? you're describing sedge, maybe... it forms a nut-like root.

funny thing here... it's edible, too. in fact, a lot of historians and historical nutritionists think that the pyramid builders in egypt ate a diet based on nut-sedge. mmmm... weeds.

Felix, my parents were given a large clump of giant liriope that turned out to have florida betony in it. The stuff is just about indestructable! Until we were able to identify the plant we referred to it as "the mutant weed from h***!". It was quick to migrate out of the liriope and into the surrounding flower beds and the lawn. Don't bother trying to dig all of it up because the plants can go deep! I tried to clear any area of it and ended up digging a 2 foot deep trench and was still finding more of it. When I got to the 2x6 pressure treated board that edged the flower bed and discovered a betony tuber growing THRU the board I gave up diggin and we started experimenting with different poisons! I found that the Bayer Advanced southern weed killer for St.Augustine grass worked the best for killing betony after 2 or 3 rounds of spraying it on the plants. Round up was nearly useless against the stuff.

Heck, why kill it when you can EAT it? If you decide you like the taste of it, you will be harvesting it every day, fresh for salads, and before you know it, you'll be scouring the whole yard, wondering where it went!! All it takes for something to disappear is to WANT it to grow, ya know! ;o)

Katkin, I agree with Ill-man...it sounds like you have nut sedge or what my grandmother called nut grass. I don't know that you can EVER get rid of that one. When I burn the weeds out of the brick path, it kills all of them except the nut sedge, which I swear is back the very next day, about an inch high! Cold weather kills it back, but it pops up happier than ever in the spring. Round-up has to be applied more than once to each clump for it to work (use a paintbrush to keep it only on the nutsedge). It's a menace and a royal pain!

Marcia

Ill, not really. It is green and looks like the floratam, but has white runner roots just under the surface that are attached to the rattle part that is deep below. If I don't dig out the rattle part it only come back. It laughs at Round Up which I have used to kill the floratam when expanding my beds. And also comes through the newspaper when I do the lasagna method.

Hmmmmm...if it's not nut sedge, then ya got ME, Katkin. How about a picture? Maybe we can name it so you can find out how to get a handle on it.

Marcia

Sorry I am just not good with the camera and posting. Maybe I'll take a piece to my local Lesco's and ask them what it is. :o)