Rice Grass

The random pattern of seed heads produced by rice grass makes this plant easy to distinguish from other grasses.

NPS/ Mark Draper

Once a staple food of Native Americans, rice grass (Achnatherum hymenoides) provided nutritious seeds for their desert diets. This nutrition is not however, isolated to human consumption. The shared resource also provides winter food for rodents and seeds for birds. Throughout the years it has also become an important feed for livestock.

The plant, growing between 18 and 24 inches has tightly rolled, slender leaves growing from the bottom of the bunch. Each hair-like branch bares a single flower. Once pollinated, these flowers turn into a round or sometimes elongated, blackish-brown seed surrounded with dense white hairs that will make it slow to germinate.

Rice grass has recently been used to stabilize areas susceptible to wind erosion. It mixes well with other species in disturbed sandy soils. In a natural environment Indian rice grass is one of the first natural invaders into disturbed soils but if non-native grasses are present in the area the rice grass is not able to compete. This is in part due to the plants slow germination time and the sharing of valuable resources.