Plant · P-697

Eastern Gamagrass

Tripsacum dactyloides

Eastern Gamagrass is a native warm-season bunchgrass that keeps producing forage through the hottest months, right when cool-season grasses stall out. The seed is edible and unusually protein-rich, close to three times that of maize, though wild seed is small and slow to sprout, so it remains more a forage and wildlife plant than a grain crop today. Leaf margins are sharp enough to cut skin, and stands are lost to overgrazing rather than needing to be held back.