Participant Info

Species

Elymus repens [Agropyron repens] [Elytrigia repens] [Triticum repens] etc.

Family

Poaceae

CommonName

quackgrass, couchgrass, couch grass, quitch, twitch, witchgrass

Presence

yes

Status

exotic

EarliestDate

1930

LatestDate

2014

Ecosystem

foothill, montane

Geobotanical

SSanjuans, NCristos

Counties

Conejos, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache

Passes

WildlifePreserves

Baca

Other Localities

PhotoRecords

Comments

NEED IN SITU PHOTOS. Quackgrass, an introduced species and notorious invader of lawns and gardens, has been reported off and on from the Watershed in ruderal locations, for instance beside a house in the Baca National Wildlife Refuge (Saguache Co, 2006). It also has spread to pastures and meadows, for instance Antlers Park near Creede (Mineral Co, 1939). All in all, the herbarium record does not show any serious invasion of Elymus repens in the Watershed, perhaps because of the high elevation. The USA distribution is spread across the entire West, and the northern half of the country on east. Only Texas and the South seem relatively free of the species. It follows the Rio Grande drainage through the northern half of New Mexico, not farther down stream. The "quack" in the familiar name, by the way, derives from "quick," meaning alive; in parts of England, "quickgrass" was current at least as early as the second decade of the 19th century.

Annotation