Beefsteak plant (Perilla frutescens)

Common Names: Beefsteak mint, perilla, Chinese basil, purple mint

Description: Planted as a showy ornamental.

Habit: Small, freely branching annual herbs that reach a height of 18-30 inches.

Leaves: Small, ovate, generally purple or green in color, arranged in an opposite formation along a four-sided stem.

Stems: Four-sided and having a very strong odor.

Flowers: Small, bell-shaped flowers that are white and purple in color with a distinctive ring of fine hairs along the bottom. May be arranged in a terminal cluster or within the leaf axils. Bloom between July and October.

Fruit and seeds: Wind-borne.

Habitat: Native to Asia. It is a traditional crop of China, India, Japan, korea, Thailand and other Asian countries. Can be found along roadsides, railroad right-of-ways, streams, spring branches, pastures, fields, woodlands and gravel bars.

Reproduction: By seed.

Impact and Damage: Extremely toxic if cut and dried for hay late in the summer during seed production.

Monitoring and rapid response: Seedlings and small or shallow-rooted plants can be handpulled when soil is moist. Dig out larger plants, including the root system. Cut off spent flowers or cut of seeds/fruits before they ripen to prevent the spread of seeds. Can be effectively controlled using any of several readily available general use herbicides such as Glyphosate.

Credits: The information provided in this factsheet was gathered from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Weed of the Week 01-23-05.

Individual species images that appear with a number in a black box are courtesy of the Bugwood.org network (http://www.invasive.org). Individual photo author credits may not be included due to the small display size of the images and subsequent difficulty of reading the provided text. All other images appear courtesy of Google (http://images.google.com).

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