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| Photo Credit: Gerald Klingaman |
| The delicate strands of Mexican feather grass combine well with the coarse leaves of lamb’s ears and other perennials. |
Grasses, grasses, grasses. So many kinds, and they all look like…well, grasses. Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) is a cute little mounding plant worth trying in the garden, especially if you want an easy-to-grow planting that will do the wave all by itself every time the wind blows.
This graceful ornamental grass hit the garden mainstream in the mid-1990s and has proved much more widely adapted than previously thought. (Older plant references list the grass as only being hardy in the Deep South, but the plant has proved to be winter-hardy as far north as Zone 5.) It’s native to parts of west Texas, New Mexico and the north central states of Mexico, where it grows in open, dry woods, on rocky slopes and in dry, disturbed areas. Mexican feather grass highlights one of the quandaries gardeners face when deciding what to grow. It’s one of the good guys in the landscape because it’s easy to grow, drought-tolerant and pest-free – a real low-maintenance gem subsisting on natural rainfall and not requiring pesticide sprays or fertilizers. It’s an excellent choice in Xeriscape landscape plantings, too. This 1- to 2-foot-tall perennial bunchgrass grows like a cascading fountain. The wiry, slender, hairlike leaves are green and silky in the spring and buff-colored during winter. In spring it also has a more erect habit, as the slender, silvery, nodding panicles emerge above the foliage. The grass may go dormant in dry sites in summer and begin growing again when temperatures cool and rains return in the fall.
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