#eragrostis

Plant of the Day

Saturday 27 November 2021

From the dense clumps of Eragrostis curvula (African love grass, weeping love grass) rise these delicate arching panicles of grey-green spikelets. This deciduous perennial grass starts flowering in the summer but continues to provide a display into the winter. The plant requires a moist but well–drained soil in full sun.

Plant of the Day

Sunday 8 November 2020

In autumn the grass border of the Order Beds in Cambridge Botanic Gardens Botanic are a range of interesting textures, including the delicate curved stems of the inflorescences of Eragrostis curvula (African love grass, weeping love grass). This clump forming deciduous perennial needs a sunny, open site.

Plant of the Day

Saturday 23 November 2019

Borders featuring grasses tend to look great at this time of year before storms flatten some of the species. Here the fine, deciduous foliage and airy, curved inflorescences of Eragrostis curvula (African love grass, weeping love grass) had faded to a pale beige making a soft foreground to this collection in the Systematic Beds at Cambridge Botanic Garden, UK.

Other names include Eragrostis chloromelas, curvula (Schrad.) Nees var. valida,  jeffreysii, Poa curvula, Boer lovegrass, weeping grass, weeping lovegrass, and wire grass.

Another grass species tthat become a major pest. And this particular one, one of the ornamental forms, is at least the third go it’s had at becoming invasive - it originally showed up in Australia before 1900, probably as a contaminant of pasture seed, and then got introduced deliberately as pasture (only palatable when young), as a soil stabiliser (drought tolerant and rapid coloniser of disturbed ground), and as an ornamental grass (and promptly escaped again). It is now naturalised in all Australian states, including Tasmania, and has successfully invaded the UK, northern Africa, the Canary Islands, Asia, New Zealand, USA and tropical America as well. It’s a serious threat to a number of endagered plant species, outcompeting them for space and changing the local fire conditions. It is tolerant of very acidic and very basic soils, and grows easily in mine spoils.

In its native range - southern Africa - it’s an important forage for livestock, as well a being collected for baskets, brooms, hats, ropes, candles, food, charms, and in funeral rituals. Some cultivars are still planted along waterways, mountainsides, for land revegetation, and as a nurse crop for other species.