Doveweed

What is doveweed?

Doveweed is a creeping summer annual in the spiderwort family that has become one of the most aggressive invaders of warm-season lawns in the Southeast. Its leaves resemble lawn grass, so doveweed identification often begins with a hunch that one part of the lawn is a little too shiny and too bright green. Up close, thick, rubbery leaves, fleshy stems that root at every joint and small purple three-petaled flowers give it away.

Native to southern Asia and tropical Pacific regions and long counted among the world's worst weeds, it forms dense mats whose low, flat leaves shade out turf. Each plant can produce 500 to 2,000 seeds that survive in the soil for several years. Mowing barely touches it and can chop stems into pieces that root elsewhere, and few herbicides control it well, so University of Florida specialists advise planning a program over two to three years.

Doveweed identification: what to look for

Walk the lawn in mid to late summer, when doveweed is easiest to see. Look for patches with a slightly different texture and a glossier, brighter green than the grass around them. Pull up a runner: doveweed stems are fleshy and round, often pink to reddish, with fine roots at each joint, and the leaves wrap around the stem. Flowers settle it, because no lawn grass has small purple three-petaled blooms.

• Leaves: Narrow and pointed, 2 to 5 inches long and 1/4 to 1/2 inch wide, thick, shiny and rubbery, with parallel veins and bases that clasp the stem. The width is similar to St. Augustinegrass and centipedegrass blades.
• Stems: Succulent, round and smooth, often purplish, pink or reddish, creeping along the ground and rooting at the joints.
• Leaf sheaths: Soft hairs line the upper edges of the sheath where the leaf wraps around the stem.
• Flowers: Small, purple to sometimes blue, with three petals and three sepals, in small clusters on short stalks at the stem tips or leaf joints from midsummer into fall. Each lasts only a short time.
• Fruit and seeds: A small, smooth, round to egg-shaped capsule with three chambers, each holding one or two dark brown, roughly triangular seeds with a warty surface.
• Young plants: Seedlings start as a small rosette and are easily mistaken for grass.

Where it grows in the United States

In the United States, doveweed is found from North Carolina west to Texas and south through Florida, where it has been documented in more than half of the state's counties. USDA lists it as introduced in the lower 48 states, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Seed sprouts in late spring once soil reaches about 65 to 70°F, germination peaks above 80°F, and growth slows when temperatures drop below 70°F in fall, when most seed is produced.

Wet ground is the common thread: low spots, poorly drained soil and overwatered lawns, so its presence often points to a drainage problem. It invades residential St. Augustinegrass, centipedegrass, zoysiagrass and bermudagrass lawns, landscape beds and crop fields, and it is a well-known pest in container nurseries. Seed travels on mowers, in moving water, on the wind, with grazing animals and through tillage.

Doveweed look-alikes

A few plants get mixed up with it:

• Asiatic dayflower (Commelina communis): A larger relative with broader leaves and conspicuous sheaths at the leaf bases. Its flowers have two upright blue petals and a third tiny whitish one, while doveweed has three small purple to blue petals.
• Benghal dayflower (Commelina benghalensis): A tropical dayflower with broader, oval leaves, blue to lilac upper petals over paler lower ones, and odd underground flowers that look like small white tubers. It is on the federal noxious weed list, so a suspected find is worth confirming with your local Extension office.
• Spreading dayflower (Commelina diffusa): A sprawling, branched annual with lance-shaped leaves whose edges are usually fringed with hairs, and blue flowers. It grows larger and more vigorously than doveweed, with bigger flower clusters and wider leaves.

How to get rid of doveweed

Pulling, digging and mowing: Hand-pulling is easy and works well on small patches, but be thorough, because stem fragments left behind can root and regrow; get plants out before they flower and set seed. Mowing does not control it, since it grows below the blade, and it can spread cut stem pieces, so bag clippings from infested areas. In landscape beds and containers, a mulch layer 1 to 3 inches deep reduces germination and growth. Doveweed seed needs light to sprout, and burying it an inch or more cuts germination by more than 90 percent.

Cultural control matters most, because the right conditions keep it from coming back.

• Correct drainage problems and cut back on irrigation; doveweed favors wet sites and overwatered lawns.
• Avoid mowing too short or too often, which weakens turf and lets doveweed's flat leaves shade it out.
• Apply a light to moderate dose of nitrogen with or just after a herbicide treatment so the grass recovers and fills in over surviving weeds.
• Keep turf dense with the correct mowing height, fertility and soil pH for your grass type.
• Mulch beds 1 to 3 inches deep to keep light away from the seed.

Herbicides: Preventing seedlings is far easier than killing established mats. In lawns, preemergence active ingredients include atrazine (not for bermudagrass), simazine, dimethenamid-P and indaziflam, applied by late spring just before doveweed emerges; a crabgrass preemergent put down in February or March may have worn off by then. For plants already up, postemergence options in warm-season lawns include atrazine and simazine; thiencarbazone with iodosulfuron and dicamba; metsulfuron with dicamba, safest on bermudagrass and zoysiagrass and able to stunt and discolor St. Augustinegrass and centipedegrass for a few weeks; sulfentrazone combinations; and 2,4-D with dicamba, which gives only fair control and can injure St. Augustinegrass. Treat young plants and expect repeat applications as the label allows. In landscape beds, flumioxazin and indaziflam are preemergence options, and established plants can be spot-treated with glyphosate or glufosinate kept off ornamentals. Use products labeled for your turf species or planting, and follow the label, which is the law. If you hire someone to spray, make sure they hold your state’s pesticide applicator license; the rules for each state are in our pesticide applicator license guide.

Keeping it from coming back

Keep it from going to seed: pull or treat plants while small, bag clippings where it grows, and clean mowers before moving to clean areas. Because seed sprouts only at or near the surface in light, dense turf and mulched beds give it few places to start.

Then take away the moisture it loves by fixing drainage and watering only as needed, and time a preemergence treatment for late spring rather than relying on an early crabgrass application alone.

Questions we get about doveweed

Similar weeds

Asiatic DayflowerCommelina communisBurcloverMedicago polymorphaChamberbitterPhyllanthus urinaria