hummus
Rising Star
Well seeing as the gates to mimosa are quickly swinging shut I thought I'd do a bit of work on phalaris. I'll try to update this thread as things go on ..
First came me talking with an ecologist friend of mine, basically it turns out that phalaris is a lot more common than I thought.
(This applies to the UK at least) You just want to go for a nice walk, some places to look that I've found it in:
Drainage ditches
Wetland nature reserves
wet woodland/pasture with streams running through it.
Basically it's a wetland grass so is often seen growing on riverbanks and areas that are consistently saturated with water, although in more alkaline soils not in peat bogs etc.
Quick ID:
Tall, stocky and pretty light coloured grass, you'll often see the previous year's dead stems sticking up a couple feet. The stems are round and hollow, at this time of year about 3mm across.
The grass forms thick rhizomes under the surface.
See:
For where it joins the stems, other grasses don't have those curly bits (ligules) go round as far.
At maturity:
Things to confuse with:
Bullrushes
One grass that looks similar has much more flat stems compared to the evenly round stems of p. arund.
Basically, any tall grass growing by a river is most likely p. arund.
Also see:
Once you've identified it at first then it's pretty hard to miss, keep an eye out any time you go for a walk until you've found a big field of it.
First came me talking with an ecologist friend of mine, basically it turns out that phalaris is a lot more common than I thought.
(This applies to the UK at least) You just want to go for a nice walk, some places to look that I've found it in:
Drainage ditches
Wetland nature reserves
wet woodland/pasture with streams running through it.
Basically it's a wetland grass so is often seen growing on riverbanks and areas that are consistently saturated with water, although in more alkaline soils not in peat bogs etc.
Quick ID:
Tall, stocky and pretty light coloured grass, you'll often see the previous year's dead stems sticking up a couple feet. The stems are round and hollow, at this time of year about 3mm across.
The grass forms thick rhizomes under the surface.
See:
For where it joins the stems, other grasses don't have those curly bits (ligules) go round as far.
At maturity:
Things to confuse with:
Bullrushes
One grass that looks similar has much more flat stems compared to the evenly round stems of p. arund.
Basically, any tall grass growing by a river is most likely p. arund.
Also see:
