Identifying Quack Grass

Quack grass is a persistent weed that can take tremendous effort to remove from the lawn or garden. Recognizing this weed is often a matter of knowing how to distinguish it from other common weeds.

What Does Quack Grass Look Like?
Quack grass is a weed that grows in patches or mats. The blades are usually broad and tapered and attach to a hollow stem. Unlike crabgrass, they do not branch off, but instead, they clump of blades attach to a central patch of weeds. The color of quack grass blades is a deep green-blue and often it turns brown in the heat of the summer.

Quack Grass Versus Crab Grass
It can be easy to mistake quack grass for crab grass. However, crab grass is much easier to eradicate and remove. One of the easiest ways to distinguish between the two plants other than looking at how the blades are attached to the plant, is to try and pull the plant up out of the ground. Crab grass has very shallow roots, making it very easy to pull up and out of the ground, even if it is a relatively large plant.

Quack grass, on the other hand, has very deep roots made of rhizomes. This makes a large established plant almost impossible to pull up out of the ground. Usually, these efforts only result in the plant breaking off at the base, but the roots remain so that the plant continues to thrive.

If you have a patch of quack grass in your yard, be prepared to work diligently to remove and completely get rid of this annoying weed. Even with the use of herbicides, it may take several seasons of effort before it is completely gone.