Our grasses list

DEFINITION OF TERMS:

  • KEYSTONE means they are listed by National Wildlife Federation as core plants for a wildlife garden in my ecoregion (Ecoregion 8).
  • NOT QUITE NATIVE means they are slightly out of range but adjacent to NYS as determined by GoBotany and NY Flora Atlas.
  • Otherwise the plant is a NY-native or native to the area noted.

Our grasses- Page 1

  • Andropogon gerardii – Big bluestem
  • Bouteloua curtipendula – Sideoats grama
  • Bouteloua gracilis – Blue grama (MIDWEST NATIVE)
  • Chasmanthium latifolium – Northern sea oats NOT QUITE NATIVE
  • Deschampsia cespitosa – Tufted hair grass
  • Elymus hystrix – Bottlebrush grass
  • Eragrostis spectabilis – Purple love grass

Our grasses- Page 2

  • Panicum virgatum – Switchgrass
  • Schizachryium scoparium – Little bluestem
  • Sporobolus heterolepis – Prairie dropseed

Our sedges

  • Carex appalachica – Appalachian sedge
  • Carex glaucodea – Blue sedge
  • Carex muskingumensis – Palm sedge (MIDWEST NATIVE)
  • Carex pensylvanica – Pennsylvania sedge
  • Carex platyphylla – Silver sedge

Reflections

Twentieth-century German horticulturalist Karl Foerster famously wrote, “Grasses are the hair of mother earth.” I like to put it another way, “A garden without grasses is like a face without eyebrows.” They are so common and so much a part of the natural landscape that to leave them out of a garden is to force on it a pronounced artificiality that is often unintended.
~ William Cullina, Native Ferns, Moss & Grasses, p. 117