Lawns are made to shine. You must be lucky if your lawn stays evergreen and lets you plant your favorite green friends without hindrance. But attaining an immaculate garden is not a piece of cake.
In most cases, lawns suffer for many reasons and often lose their serenity. Weeds are one of those reasons why your lawn can not keep flourishing all the time. Weeds hinder the growth of the plants and grasses on your lawn and overtake them to make space for themselves.
Therefore, gardening is crucial to getting rid of weeds effectively and at the right moment. Like flowering plants, weeds come in varieties, each with a different mechanism to propagate, grow, and trap the plants thriving in your garden.
So, you must be able to identify different types of weeds and the most effective ways to get rid of them. When discussing different types of weeds, we must also consider those that bear flowers. They are still dangerous to your garden, regardless of how pretty they seem.
The worst part about weeds with flowers is that they might mix up with plants in your garden having similar kinds of flowers. Thus, making it difficult for you to differentiate between them. This way, weeds with flowers can keep growing under your nose and harm your garden.
Types of Weeds With Pink Flowers
If we dig deeper into the most common flowers, weeds with pink flowers are most predominant. They show up on almost every lawn and disturb the harmony of your garden.
Hence, we have discussed different weeds with pink flowers (pictures). It might help you identify these creepy things thriving in your garden and eliminate them as soon as possible.
1. Red Clover
Red clover is a well-known and most common weed bearing pink flowers. You must be familiar with white clover, another most common weed with white flowers. Red clover is a cousin of white clover with many similar characteristics.
It resembles white clover in appearance but has slightly longer leaves and a rounder edge compared to its cousin. The flowers also resemble white clover but have a dark pink tinge. The florets of red clover are dense and tightly packed, giving it an attractive look.
Red clover is a perennial weed that invades gardens between May to September. It can grow in tough soil conditions, such as excessively compact or moist soil, including those deficient in nitrogen.
Thus, it tends to affect not only the nearby plants to it but also the health of your overall garden. However, it might appear good news to you that it grows less aggressively than its cousin, the white clover.
Hence, it becomes a bit easier to remove them from your lawn. Pulling it up by the roots will allow you to eliminate it. Since the red clover has a delicate root structure, it does not require much work. The fine root system makes it easier to pull and difficult to regenerate.
However, if the infestation is heavy in your garden, you can use selective pre-emergent and post-emergent herbicides to eliminate red clover. You can spray the herbicides in areas invaded by red clover, and rest assured it won’t affect the plants nearby. So, you can eradicate this pink weed from your garden and restore its health.
2. Spear Thistle
Spear thistle is the next addition to our list of common weeds with pink flowers. It is a biannual broadleaf type of pink weed with a flowering period that begins in July. It is a prevalent weed with pink flowers that grow on abandoned lawns and wastelands.
Now, talking about its appearance, spear thistle grows up to 3 inches tall by the time of its second year. It has dark green leaves with prickly spines over the edges and on the surface. The heavy growth of fine hairs makes the leaves of spear thistle lighter at the bottom.
Spear thistle has two growth patterns in the first and second years of its growth. In the first year, it spreads on the ground outwardly, whereas it grows erect in the second year. The pink flowers with pink petals emerge from the shoot of spear thistle.
The weed produces seeds after the flowering season and then dies. It further reproduces and propagates through the seeds planted. Spear thistle can be a significant threat to your lawn as it grows aggressively, especially in its second year of growth, and it siphons the light, foot, and water from the desirable plants in your lawn.
The spines of this weed with pink flowers are harsh to touch. It tends to form a well-established taproot system that makes removing it difficult. Hence, if you want to remove spear thistle from your lawn, you must attack it before the seeding period begins.
You must remove it in the first year of its growth as it can be challenging to tackle later. Hand hoeing and tiling the lawn to remove the weed from your garden by its taproot are the most common methods to eradicate it. Moist soil can make the task easier if you go the pulling way.
However, spraying selective broadleaf herbicides can be your way out if the growth becomes uncontrollable. You must apply the herbicides before the blooming period so the weed cannot produce seeds.
3. Selfheal
Selfheal is also a weed with pink flowers that can be a challenging problem for your lawn. Lawns affected with self-heal weed usually require complete removal of the invaded section of the lawn and cover it with new turfgrass.
Hence, when it comes to Selfheal weed, you must protect your lawn at all costs. You can identify selfheal with oval leaves with slightly scalloped edges. The surface of the leaves of this weed with weed flowers might vary from smooth to slightly hairy.
Selfheal belongs to the mint family. It is a perennial broadleaf type of weed that flowers between May to September. It produces pink or purple flowers above the pairs of leaves ad at the terminals of the stems as vertical layers. Sometimes, the leaves of self-heal also have a purple lush when they appear in closely mown grassy areas.
This weed with pink flowers propagates through rhizomes that grow into a well-established root system, which is difficult to remove. The other reason that makes self-heal tough to remove is it is a low-growing weed that does not get affected by mowing.
Hence, you can remove self-heal by pulling it out by roots by hand if the growth is in control. However, largely invaded lawns require selective post-emergent herbicides to be sprayed to inhibit the growth of this weed.
The best way to keep self-heal growth in check is to take the best care of your lawn with healthy lawn practices so that the other plants in your lawn can overpower it.
4. Doves Foot Cranbell
Doves foot cranbell is also a threat to your lawn as far as a weed with pink flowers is concerned. This common weed grows in tough conditions. Hence, you can also find this weed in dry, nutrient-deficient, and free-draining soil.
It belongs to the annual broadleaf category of weeds with an average height of 12 inches. It has a flowering season between April and September, producing pink or purple flowers with jagged petals. You can expect the diameter of the flowers to be around 8-12 mm.
The leaves of Doves foot cranbell are rounded and resemble rosettes with hairy structures. You can identify this weed type with its basal leaf structure containing 5-7 leaf points. Doves foot cranbell can grow aggressively on your lawn as it propagates through insect pollination and sustains tough soil conditions.
Hence, you must switch to proper lawn care methods to keep this weed in check. If Doves foot cranbell appears on your lawn with limited growth, you can apply hand weeding methods to eliminate them.
However, if the invasion is large, you will need selective herbicides to eradicate them from your lawn. But it would help if you remembered that this weed with pink flowers is resistant to many herbicides and chemicals. So you might need to repeat the herbicide application after 5 to 6 weeks to ensure effective eradication of Doves foot cranbell from your lawn.
Conclusion
Weed can be an uncontrollable problem on your lawn. It tends to affect the desirable plants by physically hindering their growth or competing with them for nutrients, water, and light. Weeds with pink flowers are among the most common weeds you can come across on your lawn.
Hence, you can keep them in check by identifying and discouraging their growth with suitable lawn care methods and having a well-thriving and serene lawn.
