A few years ago I began to notice a very tall, stately grass growing on the roadsides on my daily commute. I only seemed to find it growing in southernmost Illinois. Without any good places to pull over my car on the roadsides, I wasn’t able to get a closer look. Then one day I got an email asking...

A year ago my family moved. As a gardener, I was looking for a house with a big yard with lots of potential to plant huge gardens. We found a home with almost a blank slate of a yard – after spending a few weeks removing invasive trees and shrubs we were ready to establish landscape beds and get...

About a month ago I was in the Chicago region for a conference, and I took the opportunity to stop by Volo Bog. If you’ve never been, this unique spot is home to an open-water quaking bog, which you can see if you hike the boardwalk loop. While hiking I found some clumps of Bluejoint Grass, which...

The first time I saw Beakgrass was at the Missouri Botanic Garden in a parking median. I was struck by the attractive mass of this grass, which was bowed to one side from the weight of its seed heads. I mentally filed this grass away as one that I wanted to make sure I added to my landscape one day...

As someone who learned grass identification in Midwest prairies, I don’t often focus a lot of time on grasses that grow in the woods or wetlands. But today I wanted to highlight a grass found in wetter sites that serves as a great food source for ducks and other waterfowl. It’s an annual grass that...

Summer is here, which brings a very busy programming schedule. In the past few weeks I’ve driven across the five counties I work in to deliver youth programs at local libraries. A lot of time on the road means I’m paying more attention to what’s growing on our roadsides. Last week the grass I saw...

When we think of prairie grasses, often the tallest grasses come to mind, like Big Bluestem, Indiangrass, and Switchgrass. But that doesn't mean there aren't shorter grasses growing in our prairies too.A lesser known prairie grass is Junegrass, and since we are now in the month of June, it’s only...

The first Saturday in June is recognized as National Prairie Day. Prairies hold a special place in my heart, since my work in prairies jumpstarted my love of plants and eventual path to graduate school and my current job. I’ll never forget my environmental studies class in college when we...

While hiking through an open woodland, I saw a grass that looked different from any other I’ve seen before. I bent down and snapped some pictures, using iNaturalist to check for a quick identification. I was disheartened to see that it was yet another non-native, weedy grass. This one is called...

I love when plant identification is easy, when there’s one distinctive characteristic that makes a plant stand out from others around it, leaving no doubt what plant I’m looking at. It’s even better when that characteristic sticks around all year long, making the plant identifiable no matter the...

Last fall I visited the Missouri Botanic Garden with my family, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that they added a fair amount of grasses to the garden beds that greet visitors when they first enter the garden. Of course I had to explore and snap some pictures, likely making me one of the most...

As the days shorten and winter approaches, nature has taken on a bleaker appearance. Deciduous trees have lost their leaves, wildflowers have gone to seed, and many plants have taken on a straw to brown color as their aboveground growth dies for the season. How does your lawn look? One place that...

Before the first hard frost came at the end of October, I planted many native plants around our new house. I brought some of my favorite plants with me in our move and was determined to get them planted this fall. One of the pots I brought with me had a Little Bluestem plant in it that I have been...

One of the reasons plant identification is so important is to help us tell the difference between plants that contribute to a healthy ecosystem and those that interrupt those interactions. Certain plants are exceptionally good at causing problems for natural communities, and require intervention...

It’s difficult not to notice grasses at this time of year – all of the large warm-season grasses seem to be in bloom. Have you taken a closer look at grass flowers? They are amazing to see in bloom, when the anthers and stigmas are visible. Grasses, as you may know, are wind pollinated. Unlike...

If someone asked me to name the most iconic plants of the tallgrass prairie, I would start with the grasses. Who could talk about a prairie without mentioning grass? The top three grasses that scream “tallgrass prairie” are Big Bluestem, Indian Grass, and Switchgrass. Why? These are all robust,...

Last week I attended the North American Prairie Conference in Altoona, Iowa. Shoutout to the blog readers I met there! As is typical for me, on my drive to the conference I was identifying the plants I could see on the roadsides. One grass in particular was ubiquitous in the landscape – Smooth...

A few weeks ago I was leading a plant identification hike in a restored prairie. Naturally in a prairie system, there are a lot of grasses to identify! We saw some tallgrass species as well as some weedy grasses. We also saw one of the 30+ species of Panic grasses that we have in Illinois, ...

Last week while leading a guided hike through a prairie restoration, I was able to observe numerous species of grasses – both those that are desirable in a restoration, and those that are remnants of previous land uses. While I saw native Prairie Dropseed, Switchgrass, Big Bluestem, and Indiangrass...

As someone who pays close attention to plants, weeding becomes an interesting chore. Instead of just looking for plants that are different than what I am trying to grow, I find it fun to identify all of them (and photograph them!). Talk about making a simple task more complicated! While weeding a...

As we enter May, many cool-season grasses are beginning to flower, which makes them a bit easier to identify. One such grass is a European pasture and hay grass called Orchard Grass, Dactylis glomerata. This non-native grass has been used in agriculture for centuries and can persist...

This time of year, I start getting emails with questions about how to identify grasses that people find growing in their yard. After reviewing pictures, oftentimes the grass they want to know more about actually turns out to be a sedge. Sedges are grass-like plants, but they have some distinct...

When I was a kid, we had guinea pigs as pets, Hershey, Graham, and Tristan. One regular part of their diet was hay. Each pig absolutely loved eating the fluffy little grass pieces included in the hay – it turns out those favorite pieces were Timothy. Timothy, Phleum pratense, is a popular...

A couple of weeks ago I was working in a food donation garden, prepping raised beds in anticipation of planting early spring crops. Some of the raised beds were covered in weeds that needed to be removed. One of them happened to be Annual Bluegrass, Poa annua. This grass already had an...

It might be difficult to imagine that even in the middle of winter, certain weeds have gotten a jumpstart on growth for the spring. Annual plants complete their life cycle in one year and are often divided into winter annuals and summer annuals. Several grasses fall into each of these categories....

Even during the coldest of winter days, one grass continues to boast green foliage – Giant Cane. Giant Cane (Arundinaria gigantea) is a unique grass because it is the only native species of bamboo found in Illinois. Once widespread throughout the bottomland forests of southern Illinois,...

As we enter December, you’re likely not thinking about going outside to work on your grass identification skills. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good time to pay attention to grasses! Certain grasses stand out during the dormant seasons of the year for one reason or another, and over the...

You may have heard the phrase “leave the leaves” when it comes to deciding what to do with your trees' fallen leaves in autumn. But what about the herbaceous plants and grasses in your home landscape? Should you leave them standing over the winter or cut them down? Let’s take a closer look at the...

Each year when autumn rolls around, I enjoy hiking through the woods or walking through the neighborhood to find the prettiest trees. It really is a spectacular display of color, from yellows to oranges, reds, and purples. While I have my favorite fall trees, I also find that grasses come into...

Most pictures and drawings of the tallgrass prairie feature one grass – Big Bluestem. This grass is a quintessential prairie grass that once covered Illinois. Also called Turkeyfoot, it’s likely that even if you aren’t familiar with grasses, you’ve seen this one. Today used extensively in prairie...

While driving from one end of Illinois to the other and back this past week, I enjoyed seeing the abundance of Indiangrass carpeting the median strips. The blue-green foliage is topped with golden-orange panicles of smooth, soft spikelets. Indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans) is one of my...

While driving to work today, I scanned the sides of the road to see what grasses are in bloom. I was happy to see large patches of a grass with purple inflorescences. These dark purple grass spikelets belong to Purpletop (Tridens flavus). Ah, a common name that accurately describes...

I’m sure many of us have been hiking in the woods and been able to make general plant identifications – I know that’s a maple over there, here’s an oak, that’s definitely a hickory. But what about taking the next step to find out which type of maple, oak, or hickory? Getting an identification down...

Today while visiting one of the food donation gardens I manage, I stopped by our sensory garden to see what was blooming. Finding plants for a sound garden is challenging, but we added in some native grasses, as they create a pleasant rustling sound when a breeze flows through the leaves. The grass...

As we reach mid-July, the foxtail grasses have started to flower. Named for the appearance of their spike inflorescences, these grasses are easy to pick out from the crowd. There are six species of foxtails in Illinois, but three of them are very common, found in every county in Illinois. All...

One of my favorite grasses started blooming during this past week – Side Oats Grama. I planted some in my garden last fall and am thrilled to see it blooming. Side Oats Grama is one of four grama grasses that can be found in Illinois, and by far the most common. The other three look much more like...

I spent a lot of time exploring restored grasslands during grad school while collecting data for my research. I had become familiar with the most common grasses in the area, but one day I ran across something that didn't look super familiar. I didn’t know what to think at first, because it looked...

With warmer weather and spring rains, grasses have begun to grow. Looking around my yard, my lawn grasses are rapidly greening up, some even flowering between our routine mowing. Other grasses in my landscaping are just starting to put out new leafy growth. Why the difference in growth rates? Cool...

When I hike in the woods during the spring, I’m always excited to see my favorite spring ephemerals in bloom. I can recognize Celandine Poppy by the sunshine yellow flowers with four petals, Yellow Trout Lily by the recurved, yellow petals forming an upside-down cup, and Pawpaw by the...

What do you see when you look at a grass? Green leaves in a bunch? The cause of your allergies? A plant that constantly needs to be mowed? Grasses do not invite easy identification. They are missing the number one useful identification feature – a colorful flower! But that’s not to say that they...

I never thought I’d be called “the grass lady.” When I started getting into plant identification, I too looked at grasses as a group of plants that only the best of the best could identify – and that was most definitely not me. And then I found myself in an internship where I needed to tell...