Festuca elatior Seeds | Tall Fescue
LATIN NAME: Festuca elatior
COMMON NAME: Tall Fescue
Plant Profile
Tall Fescue (Festuca elatior) grows as a robust, tufted, perennial in the grass family (Poaceae). Young plant grows into a flat-topped crown, around ten metres at maturity. It does well in sun or light shade and deep, moist ground. Not many plants ask so little and repay so much.
Science & Biotechnology
Like other members of the grass family, Festuca elatior draws steady attention from botanists and plant breeders, who value the genus both as a subject of research and as a source of garden-worthy material. Tall fescue has a real and distinguished place in the research. It is the kind of species that plant scientists reach for when they need reliable material for propagation and selection studies.
Uses & Benefits
In the garden, Tall Fescue earns its place in borders, containers and mixed plantings, and it also rewards growers who raise plants for cutting, drying or kitchen use. Ecologically, tall fescue is a generous grass of the garden. Its fine, upright, open heads of small spikelets feed seed-eating birds, and its fine, tufted, leafy growth gives a fine, dense, green cover to lawn and the pasture. It is a grass of dependable, hardy kind. Beyond the establishment year, its needs are simple and few.
Fescues are the backbone of fine lawns and upland pasture, and their roots host the alkaloid chemistry that makes endophyte research a whole field of forage science.
Growing from Seed
Sow fresh seed of Tall Fescue under ordinary good conditions. Use a fine, free-draining seed compost, scatter the seed evenly, cover it lightly and hold it just moist in good light. Pot the young plants on as they grow, harden them off gradually, and plant them into their final positions when sturdy.
Our Take
Among the Festuca group, it is one of the more distinctive species in cultivation. Beginners will find it patient of imperfect technique.
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