Native Grasses

 

Once the seed has been planted this old adage must be remembered – “The firstyear they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap.” Patience truly is a virtue while waiting for a native grass stand to establish.

Native or Introduced?

Habitat and Range grasses are naturally divided into several basic classifications, native or introduced, and warm or cool season. Most range plants are native, or plants that originated in North America. Introduced refers to plants which have been brought into North America from another continent and were adapted to conditions here.

Cool season or Warm season?

Cool season grasses grow primarily in the cooler spring and fall months with a summer ‘slump’,while the warm season grasses start growth later in the spring and exhibit most if their growth in the hot summer months. In the Central Great Plains most grasslands will be predominantly one type or the other. In a new seeding with both warm and cool season species, the aggressive early spring growth of the cool season grasses give them the competitive advantage over the slower starting warm season species. For this reason most seeding recommendations will be either for a warm season mixture or a cool season mixture but only in special cases will they be mixed together.