What is velvetleaf?

Velvetleaf is a big summer annual from Asia, a relative of hibiscus and hollyhock. It was brought to North America in colonial times as a possible fiber crop and escaped into farm fields, where it’s now one of the most troublesome broadleaf weeds in corn and soybeans. Velvetleaf identification is easy: if the leaves feel like soft fabric, you’re on the right track.

In a home garden, the real issue is its seed. A single plant can produce thousands, and those seeds can stay alive in the soil for decades. Let a few plants go to seed and you’ll be pulling velvetleaf for years.

Velvetleaf identification: what to look for

Velvetleaf grows straight up on a sturdy stem, usually 2 to 4 feet tall, sometimes taller than a person on rich ground. It’s easy to recognize at almost any stage.

• Leaves: Large, heart-shaped and pointed at the tip, often as wide as your hand. Both sides are covered in short, soft hairs that give them a velvety feel.
• Smell: Crushed leaves give off a strong, unpleasant odor.
• Flowers: Single orange-yellow flowers, about half an inch to an inch across, tucked into the leaf joints starting in midsummer. Each lasts about a day.
• Seed pods: The giveaway. Each pod is a cup-shaped ring of segments with short beaks around the rim, crimped like a pie crust. They start green and turn dark brown to black as they ripen.
• Seedlings: Even young seedlings have the soft, hairy, heart-shaped leaves.

Where it grows in Pennsylvania

Velvetleaf is a weed of rich, recently disturbed soil in full sun. In Pennsylvania it’s everywhere in corn and soybean country, and it moves into vegetable gardens, field edges, freshly graded areas and construction sites. It shows up in fertile loam and clay loam soils, and it handles poor drainage and dry spells fairly well.

It often arrives in a garden in manure, compost or topsoil from a farm field, since the hard-coated seeds survive a lot.

Around homes in central PA, the usual story goes like this: a new garden gets built with soil hauled in from a field, and that first summer a crop of velvetleaf comes up between the rows. Shade from crops doesn’t slow it much, because it simply grows taller than most of them.

Velvetleaf look-alikes

Common mallow is in the same family, but it’s a low, sprawling weed with small, round, scalloped leaves and pale flowers. Common cocklebur has big leaves too, but they feel rough like sandpaper and the plant makes spiny burs.

Young wild sunflowers can look similar from a distance, but their leaves are rough, not soft. If you touch a leaf and it feels like velvet, it’s velvetleaf.

How to get rid of velvetleaf

In a home garden, pulling and hoeing are the right tools. Velvetleaf is an annual, so it doesn’t come back from the root; the goal is simply to kill every plant before it drops seed.

• Hoe seedlings early: Most velvetleaf emerges from mid-spring to early summer. Shallow hoeing or hand-weeding at the seedling stage takes care of most of it. Make sure you cut or uproot the plant fully; seedlings sliced off right at the soil line can recover.
• Pull larger plants: Bigger plants pull fairly easily when the soil is moist. Grab low on the stem.
• Bag plants with pods: If pods have formed, bag the plants and put them in the trash. Don’t compost them; seeds can survive a home compost pile.
• Mulch: Straw or shredded mulch between garden rows keeps light off the soil and cuts down on new seedlings, since most velvetleaf comes up from the top inch of soil.
• Herbicide: Velvetleaf is rarely a lawn problem. Around landscapes and non-crop areas, broadleaf herbicides containing 2,4-D or dicamba work best on small, young plants. In vegetable gardens, chemical options are limited and vary by crop, so hand control is usually the honest answer.

If you do use an herbicide, read and follow the label; the label is the law. Make sure the product is labeled for your site, especially in or near a vegetable garden. Applying herbicide for hire in Pennsylvania requires a PA Department of Agriculture pesticide applicator certification, so larger jobs should go to a licensed applicator.

Keeping velvetleaf from coming back

Because the seed lasts so long, stopping seed production every single year is the whole strategy. Walk the garden once a week in summer and pull anything with velvety leaves. Over time the seed bank in the soil will decline.

Be careful about what you bring in. Ask where topsoil, manure and compost came from. And keep disturbed ground covered: mulch bare soil, plant cover crops in empty garden beds, and seed or sod graded areas promptly.

Questions we get about velvetleaf

Similar weeds

Common LambsquartersChenopodium albumRedroot PigweedAmaranthus retroflexusCommon CockleburXanthium strumarium