I've read posts through the years where people thought chufas and yellow nutsedge (nutgrass) were the same thing. There is at least one state that declares them to be the same and won't allow chufas to be sold in the state. I think they are very different plants, and I took a picture this week that illustrates it

This is a field that has been in almost continuous cultivation for the last 200 years. It has a seedbank in it that includes every bad weed you can imagine. If you plant chufas and don't use herbicides, it will grow a fine crop of sicklepod. Kill the sicklepod and something else will take off. I've been able to control most weeds, but I can't do anything about the nutgrass. This field had a strong stand of nutgrass when I grew watermelons in it for an FFA project in 1969, so it's not like it got here from growing chufas. The only way I can even begin to manage it is to rotate the land every year. I've found that if I plant at the end of May, the chufas can make before the nutgrass takes over.

I didn't get any rain for a month after planting this year, and was kinda surprised that I got as good of a stand as I did. It's about right in some places, but the chufa is sparce in this area of the field. You can see a chufa plant in the center of the picture that is doing very well. It has started to bunch up and will soon produce a lot of tubers. You can see other chufa plants in the picture, but the plants that are surrounding the best chufa plant are all nutgrass. The nutgrass sends up single plants and doesn't bunch up the way a healthy chufa plant does. I thought this picture shows the difference in them very well.




Here's a view of the field from the end. You can see the chufas that are doing pretty well, but you can also see the nutgrass that is getting started. If I get another rain or 2, this should make a good crop in spite of the nutgrass.

Thanks for the pictures. Planted in rows? What row spacing and can you cultivate?

Those aren't rows; just high spots made with the disc. It was very dry when I planted and I couldn't get it to level out.

Hopefully you’ll get another couple showers on them preacher.

My seed man calls it "glorified nutgrass" but that doesn't tell me much other than it's in the nutsedge family. Interesting pics and explanation. Thanks!

Folks like your seed guy is the reason I posted this. But in fairness to him, there's eggheads that call themselves botanists and such that say they are the same plant. Others with similar credentials disagree, so it depends on who you talk to on the issue. I don't understand their system of classification, but here at PCP University we take more of a common sense approach.

When two plants can grow side by side with each other for decades and never once cross, that's pretty strong evidence that they are different plants. And the most important judge of all, that being the wild turkey, most definitely considers them to be different plants. Turkeys will dig up every chufa plant in the field, and they won't eat nutgrass if they are starving.

I ran my flock of hens and poults out of my chufa patch at my house yesterday, and they are already digging them up. The plants are less than 60 days old, but they are starting to put on tubers and the turkeys won't wait for them to mature.

This field was planted on fallow ground and has very little nutgrass or weeds.


This field was planted 150 yards away on a field that is plowed every year for a greenfield.

The tassels that are yellow are the chufa and the reddish brown are nutgrass. I need to spray this field because the grass in coming in.

Nice pics!