kweek, noun

/kwɪək/
Forms:
Also with initial capital.
Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Afrikaans, couch- or quick-grass.
In full kweek grass or kweekgras/-xras/ [Afrikaans, gras grass]:
a. Any of several species of creeping grass of the Poaceae, especially Cynadon dactylon (see quick sense 1 a).
a1928 C. Fuller Louis Trigardt’s Trek (1932) 36This mound, covered with kweek grass, is said to have remained unchanged..until today.
1929 J.W. Bews World’s Grasses 184It (sc. Cynodon dactylon) is commonly known..in S. Africa as ‘Kweek grass’, though that name is applied to other species of creeping grasses as well.
1937 Handbk for Farmers (Dept of Agric. & Forestry) 450A large number of pasture grasses..develop dangerous amounts of prussic acid when they are wilted. The most dangerous of these are the ‘quick grasses’ or ‘kweekgras’ — different species of Cynodon.
1942 S. Cloete Hill of Doves 7Looking back from the orchard gate she saw her spoor, green on the kweekgras that surrounded the house.
1946 H.C. Bosman in L. Abrahams Cask of Jerepigo (1972) 173A donga dense with all sorts of vegetation, blue lobelia and river reeds and rushes and kweekgras and yellow gazanias.
1947 Cape Times 2 May 9Only 342 acres were planted to marram grass and kweek.
1950 H.C. Bosman in L. Abrahams Jurie Steyn’s Post Office (1971) 96The mealie planter doesn’t seem to work so well on the lands, behind a plough, going over kweekgras sods and pieces of turned-up anthill.
1954 K. Cowin Bushveld, Bananas & Bounty 178Covered with kweek grass and ploughed up to expose the roots.
1954 C.E. Hubbard Grasses 335Like other well-known grasses it (sc. Cynodon dactylon) has numerous common names, being known as ‘Kweek’ in S. Africa, ‘Doob’ in India, ‘Couch’ in Australia, ‘Bermuda Grass’ in the United States, and in the British Isles sometimes as ‘Creeping Dog’s-tooth-grass’ or ‘Creeping Finger-grass’.
1969 E. Roux Grass: Story of Frankenwald 56 (caption)Cynodon dactylon (kweek, a runner grass) forms a thick mat on the surface of the ground, with surface and subterranean runners.
1972 S. Afr. Garden & Home Oct. 19Your best lawn grass will be the local kweek which is adapted to your conditions.
1979 M. Parkes Wheatlands 64The whole area at the time being covered with thorn trees with ‘Kweek gras’ growing luxuriously beneath the trees.
1983 H. Thesen in Outeniqualander/Herald 21 Dec. 26Kweek grass comes in like a colonising vanguard to win the land back to its primeval state.
1988 R. Billet in Farmer’s Weekly 1 Jan. 7The grazing is kweek and wild buffalo grass.
1989 M. Roberts Herbs for Healing 34Make a tea..using either Celery, Borage, Kweekgras rhizomes or Parsley.
1992 [see buffalo grass sense 1].
b. With defining words designating various species of grass (all of the subfamily Chloridoideae):
kwagga kweek, Eragrostis bergiana; cf. quagga quick (see quagga sense 2);
pan kweek, Sporobolus tenellus;
regte kweek, Cynodon incompletus;
Transvaal kweek, Transvaal kweekgras, see Transvaal.
1933 Farming in S. Afr. May 190 (Swart)Kwagga-kweek is utilised in winter to a large extent after the other grasses have ceased to be eaten.
1981 G.B. Silberbauer Hunter & Habitat 41Game animals..favour the pans because the palatable pan kweek grass (Sporobolus tenellus) grows there.
1935 J.W. Mathews in Jrnl of Botanical Soc. of S. Afr. XXI. 13In a publication on Lawns and Lawnmaking, by the Division of Botany, it says of the Regte Kweek (Cape Province) Cynodon incompletus: ‘A surface creeping grass of the coastal districts of the Cape that resembles very much the Transvaal Kweek (Cynodon hirsutus), but is less hairy and a deeper green in colour’.
Any of several species of creeping grass of the Poaceae, especially Cynadon dactylon (see quick sense 1 a).
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Afrikaans
kwedini, nounn.kwela, nounn.
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