Help with identifying what this is

[Oldschool]

Greetings ATY…

Friends lawn being eaten up by this stuff. Is it crabgrass? Any help identifying is appreciated…

Thank You

[bpgreen]

I'm not great at identifying different types of grass, but that looks like k31 tall fescue to me. K31 is an unimproved pasture type of tall fescue. It's in a lot of mixes, especially "drought tolerant" and "sun and shade" mixes.

[MorpheusPA]

Yep, that's K-31 (Kentucky-31 Fescue). It's bulletproof, drought-tolerant, disease-tolerant, and pest-tolerant fescue. It's used in most cheaper to mid-range mixes. It's not the most attractive grass, but it's going to survive conditions most other grasses won't.

It's not responsive to most herbicides. Your friend can spot-spray with Round Up to get rid of it, but those areas will either need to be reseeded in August or, if the lawn contains Kentucky Bluegrass, it'll respread into those areas if treated properly.

[bpgreen]

To give you an idea of how bullet proof and drought tolerant it is, I live in Utah and we've been in drought for the past few years (and normal rainfall is only about 1.5 inches during the summer months), I haven't watered my lawn since some time in 2019.

I've got clumps of k31 from some overseeding I did probably more than 20 years ago before I knew how to read grass seed labels.

[texpa]

K31 is what nightmares are made of

[MorpheusPA]

It's not quite that bad in a mixed lawn. But if you have a bluegrass lawn then it certainly isn't something you want.

And don't overspray iron on the stuff. It won't die. Oh, no. It'll turn this weird alien gray-black-green, start growing at an insane rate, and not turn back for at least six months. A good eye for color will see overtones of strange hues for a year.

[Oldschool]

Thanks for all the replies. Not good news but at least we now know what we are dealing with. The round-up apps have started.

Thanks again, everyone!

[texpa]

Just to clarify to my nightmare statement... I suppose if your whole yard was K31 you would never have to worry about watering again. It's also the darkest green out of anything I had and maintained it's color through out our drought last year when my rye, kbg, etc went dormant/died. It definitely isn't a pleasant grass to walk barefoot on though. If we weren't all lawn nuts here, I think this would be my go to choice for super low maintenance living outside of mowing.

[Jump Start 2]

This is a full k31 lawn all he does is cut it .

[flyin-lowe]

My neighbor has a 5 acre lot (house,barn, etc. included) so proabably close to 4 acres of grass. He did the entire thing in K31 I am guessing because it was cheap and easy to keep alive. He keeps it mowed very short and it doesn't look to bad. Not my first choice of lawns but it looks better than what most people have for that size of lawn.

[NutterButter]

This was one of those grasses that I've seen in my lawn that I never did get an identification of. I was thinking a fescue based on the leaf shape but its nice to know for certain.