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Guest Column

Native bunch grasses soften edges while they sway

By JANE WEBER
Published July 24, 2006

When air masses from both coasts meet on an average midsummer afternoon, Citrus County can get a welcome shower or thunderstorm to replenish the aquifer and irrigate gardens.

Florida has several species of native bunch grasses that can be used to soften linear edges, hide a drainage swale or retention pond, stabilize a slope and add round form, texture, sound and movement to a garden.

Florida gamagrass, Tripsacum floridanum, readily available in the nursery trade, occurs naturally in Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park rocky pine land in South Florida. It is endemic, occurring nowhere else in the world.

Frost and freeze hardy, "Fakahatchee grass" rarely grows to 3 feet tall and forms a soft, dense, compact mound about as wide. Exposure is full sun to light shade.

It will adapt to xeric conditions but does best with some weekly irrigation once established. Native to Zone 10, it tolerates frost to Zone 7. Citrus County is in Zone 9a.

Eastern gamagrass, Tripsacum dactyloides, is taller, from 4 to 8 feet, more robust and hardy to Zone 4. Ranging throughout Florida, Eastern gamagrass grows as far north as Massachusetts, over to Texas and west to Iowa.

"St. Lucie" is the tallest, widest-leaved variety, and it's found in St. Lucie County on the Atlantic seaboard, while "Martin" comes from Martin County, sandwiched between Lake Okeechobee and the ocean. It makes a good, nutritious and tasty hay for livestock and is a great substitute for the alien, overused and saw-edged pampas grass.

Grass blades have smooth edges, a prominent mid rib, are 3- to 4-feet long and arch outward from the 3- to 4-foot wide clump. Color ranges from deep green to somewhat blue, depending on the variety chosen.

Flowers rise in a summertime spike that is stout and green, then dries to straw color. The seed is a grain that develops at the base of the flowering head after the male flowers fall off.

Perennial gamagrass spreads by thick underground stems.

Both Tripsacum species remain evergreen here but could turn brown in an unusually cold winter. They prefer moderately to poorly drained soil that is acidic 5.7 to 7.5 on the pH scale. In the sandhills, the sandy garden soil will have to be amended with organic vegetable humus like the fine mulch available at Central Landfill on State Road 44 in Lecanto.

Another ornamental grass that grows well here is pink flowering muhly grass, Muhlenbergia capillaris. Companion plants include sabal palm, Sabal palmetto; Simpson's stopper, Myrcianthes fragrans; wax myrtle, Myrica cerifera; and our endemic scrub palmetto, Sabal etonia.

Gamagrass with attractive leaves and a robust mounding habit makes an ideal landscape specimen with interesting, though not showy, flowers and seed heads. It is low maintenance and requires little irrigation or fertilizer.

To enjoy the soothing swish of tall grasses swaying gently in a breeze, the gardener can do no better than to plant a bunch of native ornamental grasses.

Editor's note: This weekly article is provided by Jane Weber, professional gardener, grower, consultant, designer and environmentalist. Visit her Certified Florida Yard and Backyard Wildlife Habitat, 5019 W Stargazer Lane, Dunnellon. Call (352) 465-0649.

[Last modified July 24, 2006, 07:21:33]