No matter how you pronounce it: the zebra that's a grass

Species name: Miscanthus sinensis

Common name: zebra grass

Location: Ontario

I mentioned in a previous blog post about the tufted hair-grass, Deschampsia cespitosa, that there was essentially only a couple other very easily identifiable grasses without the use of a microscope, and this is one of them! Zebra grass is a grass species native to Asia that has the potential to become incredibly invasive in North America. Thankfully, there are many modern cultivars that do not produce viable seed, so this possibility has been reduced. The plant can still reproduce asexually through the use of rhizomes, but this mostly helps to "fill out" a patch, as opposed to spreading underground to a new location. That being said, I have seen some zebra grass in roadside ditches around southwestern Ontario (with the striped foliage, it's hard to miss!), so some has still very clearly (and very successfully) escaped. With a little background knowledge about this plant before you landscape with it, the chances of zebra grass escaping and becoming an invasive species is slim. This is definitely one plant where gardener responsibility is key: if you remove the plant from your back yard make sure you dispose of it properly, and make sure you plant a hybrid cultivar.

Other than ornamental value, it currently has no other uses. It is, however, being examined as a possible candidate for bioenergy (either through fermentation of the leaves to produce ethanol or burning the plants to produce combustion energy) due to the fact that it is extremely fast-growing during the growing season. It would rival sugarcane as an energy source (sugarcane currently accounts for up to 80% of Brazil's energy production annually in some areas, up to 50% of the energy produced for large cities. The Olympics in 2016 will run exclusively on sugarcane!) for temperate areas where it thrives. It also is not as destructive on an ecosystem like corn (so an attractive alternative for corn-based ethanol) and has much higher levels of genetic variation than typical crops so you don't have to worry as much about pathogens wiping out the entire crop in a growing season.

A word of caution about this grass: while it might not seem that way at first, the edges of the grass have saw-like projections which can seriously harm human skin if grabbed the wrong way. I was weeding in the garden and found this out the hard way. If you've got this grass easily accessible to a small child, make sure you put a fence around it until the child is no longer tempted to grab at the attractive leaves. If not, you might end up being the single reason why Band-Aid is still in business!

An almost-native ornamental grass

Species name: Deschampsia cespitosa

Common name: tufted hair-grass

Location: Ontario

Here's one example of a plant where the difference between "native" and "naturalized" has been blurred over the years. Technically speaking, the tufted hair-grass is native to the western coast of North America but it had been transported to the eastern coast centuries ago. It is now naturalized to a very similar habitat on the eastern coast; so much so that it's difficult to distinguish it there from a native grass because it thrives in communities with other native eastern grasses. In fact, this plant does incredibly poorly when planted on its own so there's definitely some sort of synergistic effect when it exists in grasslands. The idea is that in pure culture (that is, when the plant is growing on its own away from other native grasses) it doesn't possess the full community of symbiotic fungi in the root system of the plant that it requires, and so can't acquire nutrients as well as it can when grown in a grassland community. An interesting idea, but I'm not honestly sure if anyone has looked at this phenomenon with this particular plant in detail. And like animals, every plant is different! Reasoning for a lack of optimal growth in one plant species can't always be applied to another species even in the same habitat. Currently, the tufted hair-grass is not at immediate risk for population decline, however the habitat that it thrives in is becoming encroached by urban sprawl. There might be a time in the very near future that this is a species that's threatened or at risk.

In general, I really don't like trying to identify grasses since you almost always need a complicated identification key and a microscope. There are a few exceptions that I'll highlight later this summer, but this is one of the exceptions of the smaller ornamental garden grasses. If you run your fingers along the blades of grass of this species, one direction will feel like you're being cut by thousands of little razor blades (trust me, it's not pleasant!) while running your fingers the other way will feel smooth as silk. If the blade of grass feels that way and it has big tall seed heads that turn brown before the grass does AND you're in North America, then you've got the tufted hair-grass.

Interesting factoid: a closely related species to this grass, Deschampsia antarctica, is one of only two flowering plants on all of Antarctica!