Photo Credit: Fred Krampetz, USFWS

Kochia, Fireweed, Summer cypress or Burning bush is a many branched annual.

• Grows to seven feet tall.
• Is often a grayish-green as a juvenile plant and brownish-red at maturity.
• Leaves are alternate, lance shaped with margins of fringed hairs.
• Inflorescence (flowering part of the plant) is green inconspicuous flowers attached to the base of the terminal bud or in panicles in leaf axils.
• Fruit is a dull brown to grayish-black, rough and sometimes flat seeds.
• Kochia grows in dry, non fertile soils in areas like roadsides, waste areas and ditch embankments.

Kochia is grazed by livestock and comparable to alfalfa for nutritive value and palatability. It can however, contain high levels of nitrates which can be toxic. Settlers to the new world used Kochia shots for potted herbs and their seeds as meals/and or to make bread flour.

For a complete Refuge species list

For in-depth plant information
connect with the U.S. Dept Agriculture Plant Data Base

Last Updated: 2/9/09

Plants that do not grow naturally on this short grass prairie are called "invasive species."

INFORMATION from US Fish & Wildlife

INFORMATION from USGS

ANNUAL RYE
CANADA THISTLE
CHEAT GRASS
FIELD BINDWEED
KOCHIA
COMMON MULLEIN
MUSK THISTLE
RUSSIAN KNAPWEED
RUSSIAN OLIVE
RUSSIAN THISTLE

VOLUNTEER WEED MAPPING
PROGRAM