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Plains Muhly

Muhlenbergia cuspidata

Plains muhly is a small, dense, blue-green bunchgrass of the driest ground on the mixed-grass prairie: limestone glades, gravel hills, eroding bluffs and the thin soils over bedrock where taller grasses cannot hold. It is warm-season and slow, forming a tight tuft barely a foot and a half high with fine narrow leaves and slender spike-like panicles held close to the stem, so the plant is quietly textural rather than showy. Because it is uncompetitive it persists mainly where nothing else will, and botanists treat its presence as an indicator of a high-quality dry prairie remnant. It is very long-lived once established and effectively drought-proof, its fibrous roots binding gravel that would otherwise wash. In a garden it suits a rock garden, a gravel bed or a container, at a scale where its fineness actually registers. It wants full sun, poor soil, and no irrigation whatsoever.

Family

Poaceae

Type

grass

Lifespan

perennial

Height

1.4–1.4 ft

Spacing

0.5–1 ft apart

Light

sun

Soil moisture

dry

Soil pH

acidic, neutral

Bloom

April, May

Bloom colors

yellow

Wildlife value

songbirds

Landscape uses

border, groundcover, container, naturalizing

Native states

AR, CO, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NM, OH, OK, PA, SD, TN, VA, WI, WY