Another wonderful noxious weed. By late summer you should have plenty of gorgeous new bahia from the seed.

To clarify, the seed which is plainly visible on the heads, you can shake it of or mow it after a week and it will be in your lawn waiting for some tropical showers to come along.

Thanks.

BTW: a plant is not a noxious weed if it's growing where you want it to grow and doing what you want it to do. Bahia is hard to beat if the objective is reclamation or forage.

If it weren't escaping into wetlands were it grows 2 inches a day and chokes out native vegetation, I'd agree with you.

That's a genuine non-issue around here. We're blessed with cogon which more than adequately deals with that little problem :-)

Seriously, do you have any links to documentation which indicates this is a real problem ANYWHERE?

http://www.se-eppc.org/southcarolina/SCList.pdf
http://www.gaeppc.org/list.cfm
http://tncweeds.ucdavis.edu/moredocs/pasnot01.pdf
http://www.invasive.org/weeds/usfsr8/OtherEPP.html
http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/bimages.cfm?SUB=6143&area=26

Here's just a handful. Google has lots more if you need.

Just as a side note, if you are using different types of forage grass you probably don't want to use bahia. When mature seeds in the hay is pooped out in pastures where you're using something else, guess what happens next. Then again the wind usually takes care of spreading it to unwanted places.

Thanks for the links. Just as I thought. Not a really big deal.

In practical application, neither bahia or bermuda moves very effectively through hay feeding, feces or weather.

From east to west, I have 20 acres of argentine bahia, 40 acres of bermuda, then 40 more acres of bahia out behind me. The east bahia field isn't planted in winter grass and that's where all the hay is fed, both coastal bermuda and a couple varieties of bahia. The other two fields are planted in annual rye and oats for winter forage. The only crossing of grasses you'll find is a little bit of bermuda scattered around the area in the east bahia field where the rolls of hay are dropped for the cattle.

The bottom 20 acres of this east field is watering pond and swamp (wetlands). You won't find any "invasion" of either bahia or bermuda growing in there even though cattle are in the area all year long and pooping out both bahia and bermuda seed.

The only invasion you see around here is the centipede from my yard growing out into the pastures.

I'm interested to know why you've chosen argentine bahia instead of pensacola. I presume you are in N. FL or LA or AL or one of those areas since you mentioned the centipede. My understanding is that's not recommended outside of z10 for hardiness issues.
And I t hink what bothers me most about bahia is how overplanted it is in home lawns in Florida. If anywhere, keep in in the cow pastures not in home lawns and for heavens sake not on highway ROW. Millions are wasted mowing that more frequently than with suitable alternatives.
Bahia actually spreads into the bermuda sod lawns here in my z7 neighborhood as a result of cheap builder contractor mix used around a retention pond behind the house and yes it's taken over.

Yes, I'm in coastal AL. The argentine pastures were established a very long time ago. I prefer pensacola because it's a much better looking grass with no ergot problems. I've recently planted a bunch of it. 'Cane Ivan took out an old longleaf pine forest 2 acres deep along our highway frontage. Once I got the timber salvaged and the land cleaned up, I planted pensacola to keep it from going to weeds and brush because I needed a quick and aggressive cover crop. Now it's all destumped and the grass is 2 years old and doing the job nicely. We decided to subdivide that land so I started treating it like lawn this year although I did just let it go to seed until it looked like we'll have some good rain coming in. Got a good crop despite the drought so that should thicken it up some more. I kept all the volunteer oaks and have been pruning those to make good trees. In about 5 more years, the land will make some fine residential lots for sale.

I know people who have planted argentine bahia lawns for their durability, drought tolerance or out of pure ignorance but they're never happy with the end result. They refer to it as "that awful grass".

They refer to it as "that awful grass".

And that's putting it nicely. Have a nice weekend! Try to stay clear of the snakes out in the bahia patch.

Thanks UniqueOak. You also have a great weekend.

Ya know, it's funny but I haven't caught a rattler around here in almost four years. I used to snag quite a few every season.