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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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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.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 6–10
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moderate · Moist · Wet
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 5.1–7.5
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 4–6 ft
- Mature spread
- 2–4 ft
- Plant spacing
- 3–6 ft
- Root type
- Rhizome
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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Adzuki Bean
Vigna angularis (Willd.) Ohwi & H.Ohashi
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African Eggplant
Solanum aethiopicum
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Agrimony
Agrimonia eupatoria
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Alfalfa
Medicago sativa
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Alsike Clover
Trifolium hybridum
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Amaranth Greens
Amaranthus tricolor
Amaranth greens are one of the few leafy vegetables actually built for peak summer heat rather than one that just tolerates it - sown once…
Herbaceous · USDA 2–11
The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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