# How to identify Poa Annua on newly seeded lawn (it's can be tough)



## john5246 (Jul 21, 2019)

Most of the pictures and things you see online about poa annua is with someone who has a big problem. Usually the poa annua plants pictured in the lawn are large. If you've recenetly renovated your lawn the poa annua plants may be very small. What makes it tougher is that the regular bluegrass might be creating seed heads at the same time. But actually that helps to identify it! 
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1. Look for a seed head and pull it up from the roots. Try to get one plant in tact.

2. Now go look for another seed head that doesn't look like the one you just pulled. 
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If you can't find one, take the first sample inside and examine it. Take pictures of it. In the next few days as you mow or work on the lawn see if you notice any other seed heads that look different. This method is assuming that your lawn isn't 100% desirable blue grass or 100% poa annua. You should be able to find 2 different ones in a newly seeded lawn. Either way here are some pictures below of the two I've found in my lawn. I've seeded with Midnight/Bewitched if anyone is curious.



Notice the difference of the plant at the top. Look how long and stringy it is versus the others. Although it's tough to tell from this picture there is a difference in color. It's tough to look for light patches because this small plant blends in. If it was a big mature plant then you would notice a lighter green color in the lawn and be able to spot it. For now look for that seed type of seed head and examine the plant. That's poa annua.

When I did my renovation I used tenacity. Followed up in August with Scotts with Halts which has a pre-emergent. Then in the spring I spray proadiamine. With all that I've found about 3 small Poa Trivialis and about 6 Poa Anna over 2000sq ft of lawn. It's possible that I'm missing some because I can't notice a color difference. The only way to spot them would be when the seed head shoots up and makes itself known. Either way, it's not a bad amount of poa annua or poa trivialis for 2000sq ft.


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## john5246 (Jul 21, 2019)

ok this is poa annua as well but I just wanted to show off the color of my grass


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## LYKUNO (Jul 11, 2018)

Thanks John for a very timely post! I have a Kentucky Blue Grass lawn here in NE Ohio. The sod was laid in 2014. I've done my best to keep the weeds controlled, using a Gandy 24" drop spreader, applying Johnathan Green control and fertilizer products. This included their crabgrass pre-emergent (Dimension), which I put down in early April, when the soil temperature averaged 50-55 degrees. I will apply their broadleaf control product at the end of May.

We had a very mild winter, with lots of rain and very little snow. I probably shoveled less than a dozen times, and never took my snowblower out of basement storage. Spring was very wet and cool. We actually had some snow showers in the beginning of May, but no accumulations. Once it started to warm up enough to have to mow the lawn, we noticed that we had a number of light green-colored areas scattered all around our entire yard. These ranged from small areas less than a foot in diameter or less, to large ones, round to irregularly-shaped that could be 2-3' across. It definitely looked like what I've seen described on-line as Poa Annua.

There are also some areas with the whitish-colored seed pods as shown at the top of the picture in your post. We probably have a dozen or so areas with those around the yard, mostly no larger than a foot in diameter. We were not sure if they were normal KBG seedlings, or Poa Annua, until we saw your post. We also have seen the tighter seed heads (the lower two examples in your photo) throughout the yard. It's good to know those aren't Poa Annua!

I have been mowing the lawn at a 3" height, waiting for the lawn to start growing more vigorously as the temperatures are finally starting to warm up this week. Soil temperature samples I took this afternoon (2" depth) average 62-63 degrees. I am using a brand new Honda HRX 217 and will be taking the height up to 3.5" for the next and subsequent mowings.

With that background, my wife and I have spent many hours manually pulling out the Poa Annua grass by hand, over the course of the past week (it's tedious work and extremely boring, but something productive to do during Covid confinement!). Our lawn is ~7800SF and probably half of it had the Poa spots. We pulled roughly 1.5 42-gallon contractor bags of the nasty Poa Annua. I mowed the lawn this afternoon and it's finally looking better. There are still some residual "shoots" of Poa in the areas where we pulled. They're easier to spot and easier to pull now. I'll continue to watch for it as I walk the yard or mow the lawn going forward. I'll also try to get the Poa plants with the seed heads whenever I see them. Finally, I'm planning on reapplying the pre-emergent (Dimension) in the end of August to help prevent any of the Poa Annua seeds from germinating in the spring, along with the usual springtime application.

I had planned on visiting the lawn forum website this evening, to help identify if the stuff we've been pulling was indeed Poa Annua, and I've attached a picture that pretty much matches yours, with the exception of the seed head. So thanks again for your informative post - it confirmed what we suspected, and now know for certain!


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## Green (Dec 24, 2017)

Eventually, the KBG seedheads open, too, if not cut off, but they get much taller generally, and still look a bit different.

As far as Triv, believe it or not, I've found it to be a fairly prolific seedhead generator as well, similar to KBG in that way, but not quite the volume like annua. The Triv seedhead looks more like a KBG seedhead than an annua one.


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## Green (Dec 24, 2017)

@LYKUNO, nice post. Style is reminiscent of @ken-n-nancy, with the details, and another married duo working together on the lawn. I guess you guys are the k&n of the midwest here.

It's not clear if your samples are Poa annua, poa annua var reptans (creeping blyegrass), or Poa Triv (which has many biotypes/cultivars/seasonal variations in look). I'm leaning toward Triv, because annua almost never shows such a complete dearth of seedheads in such large patches. Triv does not always have seedheads, but can. If you split open the stems near the "crinkles" (which I believe are impressions from them), you may find immature seedheads inside.


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## john5246 (Jul 21, 2019)




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## john5246 (Jul 21, 2019)

The biggest issue is in a new lawn you don't have large poa annua plants that throw off the color. They are small. You need to identify them based on the seed head and pull it up to look at the blades. Upon closer inspection you'll see it's a lighter green.

@LYKUNO have you been using prodiamine? How did the poa get to be so large in your lawn?


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## LYKUNO (Jul 11, 2018)

Green said:


> @LYKUNO, nice post. Style is reminiscent of @ken-n-nancy, with the details, and another married duo working together on the lawn. I guess you guys are the k&n of the midwest here.
> 
> It's not clear if your samples are Poa annua, poa annua var reptans (creeping blyegrass), or Poa Triv (which has many biotypes/cultivars/seasonal variations in look). I'm leaning toward Triv, because annua almost never shows such a complete dearth of seedheads in such large patches. Triv does not always have seedheads, but can. If you split open the stems near the "crinkles" (which I believe are impressions from them), you may find immature seedheads inside.


Thanks for the compliment! Coincidently, my wife's name is Nancy (and my brother's name is Ken). So maybe it's mainly a Nancy thing! She loves working in the yard, whether it's hand trimming the edges and borders (no string trimmers allowed here!), or planting and tending the flowers. I'm responsible for trimming the boxwoods and other evergreens and shrubs, all with hand tools (Okatsune 217 mainly) rather than powered shears.

After viewing the photos in yours and @John5246's, I'm starting to wonder if what we're fighting isn't Poa Triv, or a mix of Triv and Annua. I do see the stiff stalks which sometimes have a reddish hue near the ground. We hadn't noticed the large patches before this year, perhaps since we spent much (most) of last summer on scaffolding working on the cedar siding of our house. Replaced a gable wall and the front porch ceiling, and hand-scrubbed the entire house prior to painting the white panels and trim, and restaining the cedar shakes. The lawn took a backseat and I didn't do much with it other than mowing. Oddly, we never noticed any major infestation of Poa or other weeds last year.

After taking a walk around the neighborhood and through the local college campus near here this morning, I couldn't help but notice the amount of Poa (whether Annua or Triv) infesting just about every lawn, and on the university's grounds. A guy around the corner who has a much smaller KBG lawn (installed by the same landscaper around the same time) shows some evidence of the same invasive Poa that we've been pulling, though less than we've got.

To date, I've only used a round of the crabgrass pre-emergent early last month. I am not familiar with prodiamine, but a quick search reveals it requires a spray-type application. I don't have a sprayer, and the wife prefers that I Ieave any chemical applications using a sprayer to a professional with the proper type of equipment, thorough knowledge of the product and any necessary precautions. I've read there's a newer product called Anuew that supposedly works on Poa. https://nufarm.com/usturf/product/anuew/.

Bottom line: We think we'll get on the phone with the very knowledgeable proprietors of the sod farm this week and see if they can recommend a course of action and a qualified person who can apply a product that will help.


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## Babaganoosh (Apr 21, 2019)

Those pics look like poa triv to me. Not annua.


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## bernstem (Jan 16, 2018)

LYKUNO said:


>


That looks like Triv. Pulling won't work. It will come back from the roots. Paint it with Glyphosate.


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