Keeping your Texas lawn weed-free can feel like an endless battle. Those pesky invaders not only ruin the look of your carefully maintained grass but can also steal water and nutrients from your desired plants.
Learning to spot common weeds early gives you the upper hand in protecting your yard and garden from these unwanted guests.
1. Dandelion – The Fluffy Invader
Bright yellow flowers that transform into puffy seed heads make dandelions instantly recognizable. Their deep taproots can extend up to 10 inches into the soil, making them challenging to remove completely.
Children love blowing their seeds across your yard, unknowingly spreading hundreds more plants. Pull dandelions when young, making sure to remove the entire root, or they’ll quickly return to dot your lawn with their sunny faces.
2. Crabgrass – The Sprawling Menace
Spreading in a star-like pattern across your lawn, crabgrass features wide, flat blades that grow low to the ground. During summer heat waves when your regular grass struggles, this weed thrives and expands its territory.
A single crabgrass plant can produce up to 150,000 seeds! Pre-emergent herbicides applied in early spring offer the best defense against this aggressive invader before it takes hold and ruins your lawn’s uniform appearance.
3. Henbit – The Purple Spring Signal
Square stems topped with delicate purple flowers announce henbit’s arrival in early spring. Often mistaken for dead nettle, this winter annual weed creates purple carpets across Texas lawns before warm-season grasses wake up.
Bees actually love henbit’s nectar-rich flowers! Hand-pulling works for small areas, but larger infestations require herbicides applied in fall or early winter when the plants are young and most vulnerable to treatment.
4. Nutsedge – The Grass Impostor
Looking similar to grass but with a distinctive V-shaped arrangement of leaves, nutsedge stands out by growing faster than your lawn. The yellow-green color and triangular stems give away this troublemaker’s identity.
Underground, nutsedge forms networks of tubers called “nutlets” that make complete elimination difficult. Pulling often leaves these nutlets behind, allowing rapid regrowth. Special sedge-targeting herbicides provide better control than general weed killers for this persistent invader.
5. Chickweed – The Winter Carpet
Forming dense, mat-like patches across winter lawns, chickweed features small, oval leaves and tiny white flowers. The stems have a unique line of hairs that switches sides at each leaf node – a helpful identification feature.
Chickens love eating this weed (hence the name)! While appearing delicate, chickweed spreads aggressively during cool, wet weather when many Texas lawns are dormant. A pre-emergent herbicide in fall helps prevent its establishment before it creates a green carpet across your yard.
6. Clover – The Nitrogen Fixer
Recognizable by its three-part leaves and round white or pink flower heads, clover spreads quickly in lawns lacking nitrogen. Unlike most weeds, clover actually improves soil by fixing nitrogen from the air.
Some homeowners deliberately add clover to their lawns for its drought tolerance and bee-friendly flowers. If you prefer a clover-free yard, the key is proper lawn fertilization and maintenance – healthy grass naturally outcompetes this low-growing plant without chemical intervention.
7. Spurge – The Milky Menace
Lying flat against the soil in a circular pattern, spurge has small oval leaves arranged opposite each other on reddish stems. Break a stem, and milky sap oozes out – the telltale sign of this summer weed.
This sap can irritate skin and eyes, so wear gloves when pulling spurge! Thriving in hot, dry conditions and thin lawns, spurge often appears in bare spots and along sidewalk edges. Pre-emergent herbicides in spring help prevent its seeds from germinating during summer heat.
8. Dollarweed – The Coin-Shaped Invader
Round, shiny leaves resembling silver dollars give this weed its common name. Thriving in wet, poorly drained areas, dollarweed indicates overwatering or drainage problems in your Texas lawn.
The leaves connect to stems from their centers, creating an umbrella-like appearance. Reducing irrigation frequency often helps control dollarweed naturally by creating drier soil conditions it can’t tolerate. For severe infestations, herbicides containing triclopyr provide effective control when applied to actively growing plants.
9. Sandbur – The Painful Surprise
Nothing ruins a barefoot walk across your lawn like stepping on sandbur! The innocent-looking grass produces spiny seed pods that stick painfully to skin, clothing, and pet fur.
Sandbur thrives in sandy, dry soils across Texas. The burs develop from small flowers along the stem, starting green and hardening to tan as they mature. Early identification before seed formation is crucial – pull young plants or apply pre-emergent herbicides in spring before this painful pest establishes.
10. Virginia Buttonweed – The Lawn Destroyer
Often called the most difficult lawn weed in the South, Virginia buttonweed forms dense mats of opposite, tear-shaped leaves with distinctive white veins. Small white flowers with four petals appear throughout summer.
This aggressive perennial spreads through seeds, roots, and stem fragments. Even tiny pieces left behind after pulling can regrow! Multiple herbicide applications throughout the growing season provide the best control of this determined invader that can quickly take over entire sections of your Texas lawn.
11. Purslane – The Succulent Infiltrator
With fleshy, succulent stems and small paddle-shaped leaves, purslane creates a reddish-green mat across bare areas of Texas lawns. The stems radiate from a central point, lying flat against the soil surface.
Surprisingly, purslane is edible and nutritious! Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, it’s used in salads worldwide. If you’re not interested in harvesting this weed, pull plants completely before they flower, as each plant can produce thousands of tiny seeds that remain viable in soil for decades.