Has anyone planted it? How did you like it? How safe is it for horses to consume? This is the first time I have heard of it.
I have a lot of erosion but I’m thinking it will be too shady to plant something like this.
Had to read up on it on Wiki.
These days I am weary of stuff that I don’t know, it might be some invasive junk.
However, it seems there is a non-invasive cultivar available in the US named ‘Sunshine’
The plants profile reads interesting, there are no glaring red flags regarding toxicity.
And you don’t know if it takes to your site unless you try.
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Several years ago I had an erosion problem around a new barn. I put down heavy duty erosion control mats and over seeded with a native wildflower and grass mix. Over time the erosion control mats dissolved and now the area has mostly flowers and native grass. I love the results–it’s showy and there’s no more erosion. It’s also great for pollinators such as bees and butterflies. If you do something like this the wildflower and grass mix would need to be tailored to your specific conditions (soil type, light, water).
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Can you share the mix you used?
@Pico_Banana, when I ordered my seeds I didn’t specify anything in particular. I just told them the soil, light, and moisture conditions and what I wanted to accomplish (erosion control) and they put together a package for me. I’ve identified pale beardtongue, a couple species of coreopsis, black eyed Susan, rattlesnake master, butterfly milkweed, wild bergamot (aka bee balm), boneset, gray headed coneflower, purple coneflower, purple poppy mallow, blue lobelia, and some aster species. They don’t all bloom at the same time, so there’s something blooming from spring through fall. There are also some grasses that I haven’t identified, but the wildflowers dominate.
I also have natives in the flower beds by my house–poppy mallows, St. John’s wort, purple coneflowers, black eyed susans, and river oats. Bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds are all over them now, and goldfinches eat the coneflower seeds in the fall.
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It’s a tall bunchgrass, it won’t hold up to regular us pasture management with frequent mowing. Also it’s not native, it’s tropical and the cultivars sold in the US are sterile.
If you tell us more about the erosion situation you can probably get some decent advice here or a referral: location, climate, site info, why its eroding, management regime etc.
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We have a sinkhole at the bottom of my property. The area going down into it is very shady (being under the treeline) and all the sand/dirt just washes down the hill.
I used vetiver grass years ago as a bio-swale along a creek bed, to help control runoff and erosion.
Vetiver grass is super cool stuff- kind of looks like pampas grass and it has big roots that match all the floofy grass you see above ground too.
The kind we got is a sterile cultivar so you can divide it as it grows but it won’t go crazy. We got ours from a university professor at a nearby college that was doing research with it.
It actually kinda-sorta worked but we discovered the kind we had was not happy in even partial shade. The stuff in the sun grew well and absolutely worked to stop erosion and disperse some pretty heavy runoff accumulation. After maybe 3-5 years it kind of petered out as the surrounding sycamore trees grew bigger and so shaded more of the vetiver.
If you’re interested, do your research online and see if you can find someone local who knows about using vetiver in your area. I won’t say it was a raging success for us, due to it wimping out in the shade, but it performed as promised in the sunny areas. Attractive, green, grew fast and for sure improved the creekside problems we had.
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