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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-1117
Inland Sea Oats
Chasmanthium latifolium
Inland Sea Oats is one of the few grasses that forms a dense, attractive groundcover under full shade, its arching stems hung with flat, oat-like seed heads that dry well for arrangements. It holds soil on shaded stream banks and slopes where most cover plants fail, spreading by both rhizome and self-sown seed - vigorously enough that a colony needs an occasional edit rather than a barrier. Deer leave it alone, birds take the seed and use the leaves for nesting, and it hosts several butterfly species as a caterpillar food plant rather than as a nectar source. It struggles in continuous full sun, where the foliage turns yellowish, and needs soil that never goes fully dry.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Partial Sun · Shade
- USDA zone
- USDA 5–9
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moist · Wet
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- Not yet recorded
- Plant type
- Grass
- Mature height
- 2–5 ft
- Mature spread
- 12–30 in
- Plant spacing
- 12–36 in
- Root type
- Rhizome
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
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Angelica
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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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