I have long enjoyed botanizing in the wire grass/pine, fire habitats, found throughout the Southeastern US coastal plain. One of the namesake plants in these eco regions is wire grass, belonging to the genus, Aristida, of which there are 37 native species in the genus. Those in the Southeast US coastal plain were previously considered to be a single species, Aristida stricta. Taxonomic work from the late 1990s, however divided it into two species, Aristida stricta (northern wiregrass) from NC and just over the border into SC, and Aristida beyrichiana which ranges from southern SC south to Florida. The difference between the two species is based primarily on the dramatic hairiness of the leaf base in Aristida beyrichiana, and a wide separation of the two species’ distribution in central South Carolina.
Wiregrasses are a very long-lived, slow-growing plants, with a life span of several decades. In the wild, they grow among an open pine canopy, composed of either Pinus palustris (long-leaf pine) or Pinus elliottii (slash pine.) These wiregrass/pine habitats were widespread in the early part of our nations history, but because wiregrass doesn’t tolerate competition or disturbance, conversion to agriculture and a reluctance to allow natural fires to burn has dramatically reduced the acreage.
Both species are equally elegant finely-textured clumping grasses that I’ve longed to grow in our garden, but our early attempts repeatedly failed. On a 2022 trip with Patrick McMillan and Zac Hill, Patrick explained that the key to successful transplanting was to move the plant in late winter. Indeed, this was the trick to finally being successful as you can see from our nearly four year old clump below. Aristida grows in very acidic sand, that ranges from very dry to seasonally inundated, so it’s quite tolerant of a range of moisture conditions. While we haven’t tried it in clay soils, I doubt it would fare well. Our 2022 transplant is happily growing in our very dry, unirrigated alpine bed. We’ll do our best to eventually get this into our production program so we can share it with other gardeners who also see its value as a garden plant.
Looks great! I was just reading about it last night. Is it evergreen, or does it die back in winter?
That’s a very interesting question. We’ve always considered it evergreen, although the older foliage does turn brown in winter. Oddly, we find several on-line sources that rate it as deciduous, with which we will have to disagree.