PlantFiles: Gallant Soldier, Quickweed
Tridax parviflora

This weed was the cause of my back problems for more than two years as I struggled to control it in my vegetable garden. We would spend hours carefully removing the plants and placing them into garbage bags to keep any seeds from spreading, and we would use a hoe to dig up the tiny new generations of plants, just to come back out in the morning and find hundreds of new ones coming up. I am giving up this year. My garden is planted; the soldiers have won; I will have a weedy garden and may make soup in the fall! I have asked the Preen company to try to include this weed in their pre-emergent product. No word yet.

In Colombia, S.A., this plant is known as guascas. It is used as a seasoning, especially for the chicken and potato soup traditionally consumed in Bogota called ajiaco.

If I'm not mistaken, this is called Chickweed in the Southeast US. It grows like wildfire, even in winter, and creates a dense mat of roots that are almost impossible to kill. We reclaimed our flower beds by using black plastic matting - nothing else worked.

This weed is the reason I quit vegetable gardening. It has several generations in one year and smothers out crops. We got it in a packet of seed from a well known company.

Tiny white and yellow flower-heads of Gallant Soldier resemble miniature Daisies. This weed of gardens, arable fields and waste ground is so widespread in the UK that it appears native, although it was introduced from South America to botanic gardens in Europe during the latter part of the eighteenth century. The common name is merely a corruption of the botanical name.