Poa annua is the scientific, or latin name, for Annual Bluegrass.
It's springtime in the mountains! One thing that is synonymous with spring and cool season turf is Poa annua seedhead. Spring is a time of year that allows us to get a good idea just how much Poa annua is in the fairways and on the greens. Like every annual plant, its goal is to complete its life cycle in one year and ensure the species will carry on into the future by way of reproduction. Whether an annual grass or an annual flower, most annuals propagate themselves by way of seed. In the case of Poa, the grass produces a seed head in spring, it falls off laying dormant through the summer and then germinating in the fall. You can see in the photo immediately above that #3 fairway is predominately Creeping Bentgrass except for some lighter green turf, which is the Poa annua seed head I am referring to. The two photos at the top, give you a close up of the seed head.
As I've written about many times before, Poa annua (Annual Bluegrass) gets a bad wrap, overall. Some of it is deserved. However, in Highlands, we live in one of the few climates in the world, where you can grow excellent Annual Bluegrass because we tend not to have extreme conditions that make maintaining it so difficult.
During the seed head stage, putting greens can be bumpy and slow because the presence of seed head adds additional friction to the golf ball and the varying growth rates of the different turf make for uneven putting surfaces. The good news is, the seed head phase doesn't last too long and by May, it's usually coming to an end.