Common lawn weeds

Crabgrass

Crabgrass is the most common summer annual weed in American lawns. It germinates when soil hits the mid-50s in spring, sprawls into wide, crab-legged clumps through summer, then dies at frost and leaves bare spots that reseed next year. Prevention timing beats curative spraying almost every time.

Dandelions

Dandelions are broadleaf perennials with a taproot that can reach ten inches deep, which is why mowing the flowers off never kills the plant. Fall is the best kill window, when the plant pulls herbicide down into the root along with winter reserves.

White Clover

White clover is a low, creeping perennial legume with the classic three-leaflet shape and white pom-pom flowers. It thrives exactly where grass struggles, in low-nitrogen soil, because it fixes its own nitrogen. Heavy clover is usually a message that the lawn is underfed.

Foxtail

Foxtail is a summer annual grass named for its fuzzy, bottlebrush seed head. It germinates a little after crabgrass in spring, grows fast in thin or compacted areas, and its barbed seeds can be hazardous to dogs. Like crabgrass, it dies at frost and depends entirely on its seed bank.

Goosegrass

Goosegrass is a summer annual that germinates two to three weeks after crabgrass and thrives where lawns are compacted, along paths, play areas, and driveway edges. Its flattened, silvery-white center makes it easy to confirm. Long-term control is as much about relieving compaction as it is about herbicide.

Broadleaf Plantain

Broadleaf plantain is a perennial rosette weed with wide, ribbed, oval leaves that hug the ground below mower height. Like goosegrass, it flags compacted soil. It regrows from a fibrous root crown each year and sends up distinctive rat-tail seed stalks all summer.

Yellow Nutsedge

Yellow nutsedge is not a grass or a broadleaf, it is a sedge, which is why regular lawn herbicides do nothing to it. It grows faster and lighter-green than turf, loves wet spots, and spreads by underground tubers (nutlets) that survive winter and hand-pulling alike.

Creeping Charlie

Creeping Charlie is a shade-loving perennial in the mint family that spreads by above-ground runners, rooting at every node into dense mats that smother turf. It is one of the hardest common lawn weeds to eradicate, and the realistic plan is a fall herbicide window plus fixing the shady, damp conditions it prefers.

Annual Bluegrass (Poa annua)

Annual bluegrass, or Poa annua, is a cool-season weed that germinates in early fall, looks innocently lush all winter and spring, and seeds prolifically even at low mowing heights. The common annual biotypes then die with summer heat and leave brown patches, though some perennial biotypes persist in irrigated lawns. Either way, the control window is fall, before germination.

Spotted Spurge

Spotted spurge is a heat-loving summer annual that forms flat, dense mats from a single taproot, often in thin lawn edges, sidewalk cracks, and droughty spots. It goes from seed to producing new seed in under five weeks, so a small June patch becomes a colony by August.

Henbit

Henbit is a winter annual in the mint family: it germinates in fall, overwinters as a small rosette, then paints thin lawns purple in early spring before setting seed and dying by summer. If your lawn blooms purple every March, the fix happens the previous September.

Common Chickweed

Common chickweed is a low, sprawling winter annual that forms bright green mats in cool, damp, shaded parts of the lawn. It germinates in fall, flowers through winter mild spells, and can produce seed within five weeks, but it is shallow-rooted and one of the easier weeds to remove once you know its season.

Wild Violet

Wild violet is a shade-tolerant perennial with waxy, heart-shaped leaves and spring purple flowers. It spreads by thick underground rhizomes and even sets self-pollinating seed pods underground, which makes it arguably the most stubborn broadleaf weed in northern lawns. Control is a multi-season project, not a single spray.