We have applied laser‐induced fluorescence diagnostics to expanding recombining barium plasmas produced by laser ablation. For relatively modest ablation laser energy fluences (∼102–103W cm−2), we have measured neutral barium leading edge density gradients of 1012–0.5×1013cm−3 cm−1and cloud expansion velocities of ∼106cm s−1, consistent with recent results of ablation studies in copper [R. J. von Gutfeld and D. W. Dreyfus, Appl. Phys. Lett.54, 1212 (1989)].