Muhlenbergia rigens

Deergrass

View of Muhlenbergia rigens, common name Deergrass. The narrow, rather stiff basal leaves grow thickly, often in a neat starburst.

As a perennial bunchgrass, deergrass retains some of last year's dry leaves.

The inflorescence is a narrow spike often 18 inches long.

Each inflorescence or seedhead is solitary and shaped like a Fourth of July sparkler.

In fact, the seedheads are so thin you might think they are just stems!

These pointy tips of Deergrass are in anthesis with tiny x-shaped anthers spreading their pollen.

How to Identify Deergrass

  Deergrass is a perennial bunchgrass often hip-high or more. The seedhead is elegantly curved, long and skinny, up to almost two feet long but usually more like a foot or so. It is spike-like, having short appressed branches. There are no awns.

Similar Species

  Spike Dropseed is similar, with seedheads long and usually not quite as slender as Deergrass. But the key difference is that Spike Dropseed has a tuft of hairs at the junction of leaf sheath and blade and also along the margins of the sheath.
  Spike Muhly can be as slender as Deergrass when it is parched, but the seedhead is distinctly shorter and has one or more gaps.
  Other long grass spikes are not as narrow as those of Deergrass.