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Help ID this grass
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Posted by lou_midlothian_tx z8 DFW, Tx (My Page) on Thu, Sep 25, 08 at 22:58
| This past year, I've been keeping an eye on this grass at neighborhood park because it seems to do really well under the crappy circumstances and I have no idea what this may be. Initially, I thought it was bermuda but as time went by, it was very obvious that it wasn't bermuda. I have to say that I like it a lot and apparently very hard for weeds to grow in despite millions of them around it.
Here are the pictures..
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Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Help ID this grass
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| Kinda looks like Turffalo to me. There's a few pictures of it floating around this site that looks similar to your pics. |
RE: Help ID this grass
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| Hmm. So that's buffalo grass. Interesting. More and more of them are showing up all over the park, probably brought by birds,kids, etc from the nearby field that apparently have these grass. It sure feels very nice to walk on barefoot. Extremely soft. Doesn't seem to grow very fast or tall at all. Looks great with only bi-monthly of mowing unlike bermuda grass. |
RE: Help ID this grass
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Supposedly it highest it grows is about 4 inches. I think I misnamed it for ya BTW, I'm pretty sure it's called Tech Turf. You can Google and get the site.
Dchall, who posts here frequently, has pics and the seedheads look like what he has pics of.
FWIW, I considered using on my lawn, but cost turned me off to it. |
RE: Help ID this grass
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| I remember the pictures by Dchall. Interesting that this buffalo grass seem dense and weeds couldn't grow in there. Bermuda doesn't seem to be able to invade it either for some reason. I googled for pictures of buffalo seedheads and it have me positive id for this grass at the park. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. |
RE: Help ID this grass
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| I first thought it was buffalo grass, but buffalo grass seeds are really large and in sort of a burr. The seeds in those pictures don't look anything like that. The seeds almost look like blue grama. But blue grama seeds are usually taller. Blue grama seed heads look almost like eyelashes. The pictures look similar, but I'm not sure. It could be a mixture of buffalo grass (perhaps an all female variety so there are no seeds) and blue grama. Buffalo grass and blue grama are often planted together. Both will stay green with very little water, even in desert conditions (I saw some wild blue grama last summer that was green even though the area had no irrigation and there hadn't been any rain for months). Blue grama is a bunch grass, although it does spread a little when it is mowed. Buffalo grass spreads via stolons. |
RE: Help ID this grass
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| Hmm... this does spread by pretty thin stolons. I don't think anyone planted these. They apparently happened to show up out of nowhere, probably last year when it was raining quite a bit and the sprinkler system was also installed at the park so that might have gotten the seeds to germinate at one point. Whatever the grass is, it's pretty nice one. |
RE: Help ID this grass
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| If it "just showed up" I would expect that it came via seeds, so if it's buffalo grass and there's no seeds yet, there will be before too long. But those seedheads look more like grama to me. It could be a mixture of the two. That's actually one of the most common prairie grass mixtures wehre warm season grasses do well. |
Can you put the pictures back?
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| I was out walking yesterday and saw a few stands of wild grama. Most of the grama I've seen lately has been in ornamental beds, but I saw some in the wild and the seed heads weren't as tall or as distinctly eyelash shaped. I think the grass you saw may have been grama. If there's any buffalo grass, you'll know as soon as it goes to seed. Buffalo grass seeds are almost as big as a dried pea and they're in a burr. Grama seeds are like dust and are very chaffy. the blades are very fine and it stays green with less water than buffalo grass. Its biggest drawback as a turfgrass is the bunching quality (and cost of seed). Another drawback around here (less so where you are) is that it turns green relatively late (although somewhat sooner than buffalo grass). |
RE: Help ID this grass
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| But they have stolons. Very thin stolons. It sure looks like they'd be used in very low maintenance lawn and still look good with monthly deep watering. The interesting thing is that there is no weed in there. There's all kinds of weeds surrounding them so they must have been producing some kind of chemicals to keep them out. |
RE: Help ID this grass
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| I'll have to take a look at the wild grama stands to see if I see anything resembling a stolon. I thought the seed heads looked like grama except that they were so short. Then I saw the wild stands and they're the same way. I think the ornamental grasses are bread to make them larger and more pronounced. There may be more than one grass in there, but the grass with the seed heads that look like eyebrows is definitely grama. It does make a good low maintenance lawn and will fill in somewhat via tillering if it's mowed. If you've got a stoloniferous native grass mixed in, it's probably buffalo grass, especially if it's got a sort of gray tint to it. |
Arrgh! Spelling
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| "I think the ornamental grasses are bread" Clearly I meant bred, not bread. |
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