Echinochloa hispidula Seeds | Rough Barnyard Grass
LATIN NAME: Echinochloa hispidula
COMMON NAME: Rough Barnyard Grass
Plant Profile
Rough barnyard grass is an annual of the grass family, native to the wet ground of East Asia, where it grows in ditches, on the muddy margins of ponds and along the edges of paddy fields. It reaches forty to a hundred centimetres, with broad green leaves, bristly sheaths and a dense, one-sided panicle of greenish or purple-tinged spikelets.
Its name refers to the stiff hairs on the leaf sheaths, which make the plant rough if you run a hand up the stem and are the quickest way to tell it from the common barnyard grass. The awns on the spikelets are long, and a ripe head looks shaggy. It is shallow-rooted and short-lived, and it dies back to the mud as soon as the seed is shed.
Science & Biotechnology
The species sits in the Echinochloa crus-galli complex, a group whose members intergrade freely and whose classification has been disputed for a century. Awn length, sheath hairiness and panicle shape all vary with the environment, and some authors treat hispidula as a variety rather than a species. Molecular work has supported keeping it separate in East Asia, where the extremes are distinct even though the intermediates are not.
Like the other barnyard grasses it is a C4 plant with a short life cycle and a large seed output, and it grows fastest in warm, waterlogged soil. It is one of the grasses that colonises newly exposed mud within weeks of a flood, and its seed survives years of burial, germinating when the ground is disturbed and then re-flooded.
Uses & Benefits
It is cut for fodder in China and Japan when it grows thickly in ditches, and the grain is eaten by birds and, in hard years, by people. In a wildlife garden it is a useful plant for the muddy edge of a pond, where the seed heads feed finches and the tussocks give cover to frogs and insects.
It is also a minor weed of wet fields, and it can carry the same pests as rice. In a garden it is worth growing only where the ground stays wet, since on dry soil it is short, tough and unremarkable. The related Echinochloa frumentacea, Japanese millet, is the domesticated form, sown as a quick fodder and birdseed crop.
Growing from Seed
Sow in late spring or early summer on the surface of wet compost at 25-30 °C, and keep the pot standing in water. The seed needs light, so press it in rather than covering it, and it comes up within a week.
Prick the seedlings out early, while they are still small, since they resent root disturbance once they have tillered. Plant them at the muddy edge of a pond or in a bog garden, in full sun. The plant needs no feeding and no care beyond keeping the ground damp; in a dry border it will flower at a fraction of its height and set little seed.
Our Take
A shaggy, short-lived grass for the muddy edge of a pond, useful for seed-eating birds and easy to keep in bounds.
Related Reading
More species in the same orbit as Rough Barnyard Grass: