Cenchrus alopecuroides Seeds | Chinese Fountain Grass
LATIN NAME: Cenchrus alopecuroides
COMMON NAME: Chinese Fountain Grass, Foxtail Fountain Grass, Swamp Foxtail Grass
Plant Profile
The fuzzy cylinder at the top of the stem is not a spike of florets but a contracted panicle in which each spikelet sits inside a fascicle of long bristles. The bristles are what you feel when you run a hand over the plume; they open dull green, take on a purple flush as the anthers and feathery stigmas emerge, then fade to tan and bronze as the season closes. Because the bristle unit is the dispersal body, a ripe plume breaks into small, spiky parcels that hook onto fur and clothing — the same mechanism that makes the grass a traveller along roadsides and creek banks.
The bristles are stiffened with silica, and a dried fascicle is an efficient burr. It works on a sheep’s fleece and on a dog’s paw alike, and it can lodge in an ear or between toes, which is worth remembering when plumes are cut for drying above a kennel or a grazing paddock. Wear gloves when stripping dried stems.
The cultivar list is unusually rich for a grass. ‘Hameln’, named for the German town, is the compact form at roughly knee height with fine, pale plumes, and it is the one most often specified for small gardens. ‘Moudry’ carries near-black plumes and is the darkest of the group. ‘Little Bunny’ and ‘Piglet’ are dwarf selections for the front of a border and for pots, while taller forms such as ‘Cassian’ and ‘Red Head’ give the full fountain effect. Because seed comes true, a packet of a named cultivar is a variety rather than a lottery.
The same apomictic faithfulness makes this grass an efficient coloniser. ‘Moudry’ is the notorious one, scattering its dark plumes into gravel, lawn edges and neighbouring beds; in parts of North America and Australia the species has naturalised on disturbed ground and along watercourses. Dead-head the plumes before they shatter if you garden on light soil or near bushland, and treat the plant as a garden subject rather than a meadow ingredient unless it already belongs to the local flora.
Science & Biotechnology
Because apomixis would let a hybrid crop line be fixed from seed, the bristle grasses have been mined for the genes behind it. An apomixis-linked gene of the ASGR-BBML type was characterised in a wild relative of this subtribe and has been used in attempts to engineer seed-borne clonal reproduction in cereals. Cenchrus alopecuroides itself is mainly a horticultural plant, but the tribe it belongs to is one of the front lines of that research, and ornamental collections are a living genebank for it.
Uses & Benefits
The bottlebrush plumes of this grass set seed that is, in the main, a maternal copy of the parent plant. Apospory — an embryo formed from a cell of the ovule without fertilisation — runs through the bristle grasses, and Cenchrus alopecuroides is one of the ornamentals in which the habit is well known. The practical consequence is enormous: a seedling from a good clump usually comes up looking like the clump it came from, and a seedling from a poor one is equally faithful. It is why the named cultivar lines in this species hold their character from seed, and why the odd variant that does appear tends to look like a sport rather than a hybrid.
Underground the plant builds a dense, fibrous crown with short rhizomes — enough to make a solid clump that survives drought and mowing, not enough to run across a border. Its closest ornamentals are the other bristle grasses, from the feathery Pennisetum villosum to the tender, red-leaved forms grown as annuals in cold districts.
Growing from Seed
Fresh-cut plumes hold for a long time in water and dry without shattering if they are taken as the bristles colour and hung head-down in the dark. Larger forms go on banks and in swales, where the fibrous root mass binds soil through the growing season. The dry winter clump also shelters overwintering insects and gives seed-eating birds something to work on, which is why many growers leave the stems standing until late winter.
Seed usually arrives as the bristly fascicle with the caryopsis still inside it. Rub the plumes between gloved hands to separate the units, then sow shallowly — a bare few millimetres — over a mix of two parts loam, one part coarse sand and one part compost, and press rather than bury. Light and warmth drive emergence, so keep the pan at 20 to 24 C in a bright position and never let the surface crust. Thin the seedlings so that each plant has a hand-span of room; a crowded clump stays small.
Named forms are better divided than sown: lift a clump in early spring, split the crown with two forks, and replant the vigorous outer pieces. Give the plant full sun and a soil that does not sit wet in winter, water through the first summer, and cut the old growth to a hand’s width in late winter before the new shoots move. Rust on the leaves in a wet autumn is the usual problem, and it is worse where clumps are overcrowded or fed heavily with nitrogen.
Our Take
Buy the cultivar you actually want, because the seed will give you more of the same — that is the whole charm of an apomictic grass. For a grass border, crimson fountaingrass is the tender purple-leaved contrast, feathertop is the softer, creamier plume for a hot bank, and Miscanthus Silberspinne is the taller silver form for the back. quaking grass is the small, nodding counterpart for the front edge. Dead-head ‘Moudry’ unless you want it everywhere.
Related Reading
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