Buffalograss
Bouteloua dactyloides
Family: Poaceae
Perennial, spreading and mat-forming grass often used as a native alternative for lawns. Reaches a foot high if not mown. The common name often has this plant confused with buffelgrass (Pennisetum cilare) which is unrelated and an invasive species in our region. Fall blooming.
Full to part sun (best in part sun or even filtered light in low desert), regular irrigation. Extremely cold hardy.
A great tortoise enclosure plant: because of this plants spreading nature it can keep up with the tortoise appetite.
Grasses also play an important role in the ecology of soil, and because they are monocots, they can be planted close to other species of plants (the nature of the root systems of monocots renders them less imposing on neighboring plants). They hold soil down and help prevent erosion. Many species are pioneer plants that convert disturbed soils into hospitable places for other plants.
Plants can be dioecious or monecious: having a single sex on a plant (dioecious plant) is a reproductive strategy to reduce inbreeding by separating the wind pollinated flowers. More plants with both sexes on one plant (monoecious) are found near the edges of its range where it is less dominant and where it forms a more continuous sod there tend to be more single sex populations.
Photo by J. Richard Abbott on iNaturalist
Bouteloua dactyloides on SEINET
Buffalograss is eaten by all types of livestock and it increases under heavy grazing pressure. The US Department of the Interior evaluated it as good to fair forage for elk in Utah and Colorado. Though it is not their favorite plant food, buffalograss together with blue grama grass is the most commonly consumed plant for American bison grazing in the shortgrass biome. At times the combined bulk of the two plants making up 80% of their diet.
In black-tailed prairie dog towns buffalograss tends to be the dominant plant species in the mixed grass prairie where western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii) and blue grama grass predominate in nearby areas.
Two species of lepidopterans feed on buffalograss during the caterpillar stage of development. The small butterfly called the green skipper (Hesperia viridis) feeds upon this and other Bouteloua species as a caterpillar. The more specialized buffalograss webworm (Prionapteryx indentella) is only known to feed upon its namesake species. It lives on the plains from Texas to Kansas.
Bouteloua named for brothers Claudio (1774-1842) and Esteban (1776-1813) Boutelou Agraz, Spanish botanists and horticulturalists; dactyloides comes from Latin dactylis and Greek daktylos for finger, referring to the grass as finger-like. There are 57 species of Bouteloua found only in the Americas, with most diversity centered in the southwestern United States. Formerly known as Buchloe dactyloides.
Found on limestone soils around 5,000 ft. mainly on the High Plains and is co-dominant with blue grama (B. gracilis) over most of the shortgrass prairie. It is found from Canada to southern Mexico. In the United States it is primarily found in the great plains mostly west of the Mississippi from Minnesota and Montana in the north to New Mexico and Louisiana in the south. It just shows up a few places naturally in Arizona in Coconino and Yavapai counties.
A closeup of the flowers, photo by Paul Rothrock, SEINET
This little patch was found growing at the Sedona Airport, photo by Max Licher