Help Identifying Grass/Weed

[emaze34]

Hello from CT,

Can anyone ID this grass/weed? It first appeared in our backyard late last summer, and by October had spread throughout our small yard. It pulls up very easily (roots and all), and I spent an afternoon last fall pulling up about 80% of it by hand. The 20% that remained seemed to die off in winter and it didn't reappear again until just a week ago.

The first photo shows some of it in the lawn, and the last 2 photos show an isolated clump in our driveway that I included because it's easier to see.

Thanks so much in advance,

Erik

[rainbowgardener]

I'm no lawn expert, but since you never got an answer, it is either bermuda grass or crabgrass.

Here's a little article with pictures about how you tell those two apart:

https://www.garden-counselor-lawn-care.c ... tures.html

Personally since I don't care that much about lawns and usually rip them out in favor of flowers, herbs, veggies, I would say it is all grass. I had to look closely at your lawn photo to spot the "weed" in it. Bermuda grass especially is often used as a lawn, because it fills in densely and takes traffic. You can waste your life trying to keep grassy weeds out of your grassy lawn. I just figure if I keep it all mowed, it looks green and level and that's all I need. My lawn is probably more weed than actual grass, but it looks ok mowed and edged.

[cynthia_h]

Not Bermuda grass. I'm intimately familiar with the stuff, having had to maintain it during high school for my father, and having defeated it in Berkeley.

Bermuda grass propagates by rhizomes (subsurface growths) along the surface. If you start pulling it up, it may "run" back several feet before actually going underground. The photos don't show that kind of growth, nor do they show the segmentation that Bermuda grass displays. As far as I've ever been able to tell, any segment *may* send out a rhizome, but thank all the gods that only a relatively few segments do....

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9