First, more beneficial rainfall in spots this week to go along with last week. Unfortunately parts of Western and South Central Kansas received damaging hail. The Drought Monitor didn’t change a great deal (remember this is as of Tuesday morning). However as this is being written, Thursday May 17, there are rain chances through early this week. Wheat in the area is heading out and rain and moderate temperatures are key in maximizing the potential grain yield. Today, let’s discuss the difference between grass crops (corn, wheat, grain sorghum) and broadleaves (alfalfa, soybeans, canola, sunflowers, cotton) and why these differences matter so much in the decisions producers make. We will tackle these one at a time and why they matter. First a little background on these two types of plants. And for the Master gardeners out there, please understand this is a brief overview.
Both grasses and broadleaves are flowering plants (angiosperms) although the flowers of grasses are typically much less showy. Grasses are part of the group termed monocotyledons which means they have one seed leaf (cotyledon). This group includes the grass in your yard, the native prairie grasses, and our grain crops – corn, wheat, grain sorghum, oats, barley, triticale. They can be winter annuals, summer annuals, perennials, and some species such as wheat, barley, and triticale are found as both winter and summer annuals. Even though there is a great deal of diversity in this group based on appearance and life cycle, they are actually closely related. Grasses are considered more advanced evolutionarily than broadleaves (dicots) and even other monocots. One main reason is that unlike broadleaf species, grasses don’t have to rely on an outside source such as insects, bats, or birds for pollination. While all grasses are monocots, not all monocots are grasses. Non-grass monocots include lilies, onions, palm trees, tulips, orchids, and bananas.
Broadleaves are dicotyledons meaning they have two seed leaves at emergence. When we mention flowering plants we most often think of brightly colored, showy flowers – dicots. Common dicot crops include soybean, sunflower, canola, cotton, and alfalfa. Dicots are an extremely diverse group ranging from deciduous trees and duckweed to the marigolds and petunias in your flower garden and the majority of vegetables in your local store. They can also be winter or summer annuals, perennials, or something grasses can never be – biennials. Biennials grow vegetatively the first year storing food in a large taproot to overwinter and regrow, flower, produce seed and die the second growing season. You may have eaten a biennial recently as they include carrots, parsley, beets, turnips, parsnips and several others. Certain garden flowers are biennials such as Sweet William and hollyhocks. Onions are an example of a biennial monocot.
For the sake of brevity, you can tell a monocot from a dicot at emergence by noting whether it has one or two leaves at emergence. And the simplest way with older plants, remembering that there are always an exception or two, to distinguish the two broad groups is that monocots have long, narrow leaves typically with a midrib to support the leaf in grassed and parallel veins in the leaf. Broadleaves are just that, not long and narrow, with some type of net venation. A perfect example is a maple leaf.
Next week will dig into the differences between grasses and broadleaves, why they are important as the differences are much greater than described here.

Dr. Victor L. Martin is the agriculture instructor/coordinator for Barton Community College. He can be reached at 620-792-9207, ext. 207.