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