Weeds can crowd out native plants, ruin wildlife habitat and lawns and make life difficult for homeowners. Each long branch has many compound leaves, and small, five-petaled yellow flowers bloom in summer. Look for puncture vine along roadways and ditches. Puncture vine produces hard, round, spiky thornlike fruits that snag onto items that pass by, like shoes, pants legs, animal fur, or tires. You can keep it from taking over by pulling up or killing the annual vines before they flower and set seed.
Seeds can lie dormant for up to five years until they find conditions favorable for germinating.
Simple, dark green leaves are adorned with abundant, yellow, pea-shaped flowers that put on a spectacular show in May and June. The plant, native to western Europe, is a nuisance in pastures, fields, and forested areas where it crowds out native plants and creates a fire hazard. Seeds are forcibly ejected quite some distance from seed pods, and they can survive in the soil for years before germinating, so remove these plants before they go to seed to keep them from taking over your landscape. If you let plants go to seed, you can expect trouble in the future. Crabgrass is a somewhat prostrate plant that grows six inches to two feet tall.