What a blessing that the winter rains bring the beautiful lush, green grass. You’ve probably seen me eating a lot of it….it doesn’t last long unfortunately. (My vet says that any horse can eat 15 minutes daily of very ‘lush’ green grass without harm).
Just about now is the time when the ‘seeds’ can be seen on the various kinds of grasses. A few weeks ago, all that grass looked alike, but now we can tell what kind of grass it is, by what the seeds look like.
Some of our wild grasses are nutritious – we have domestic oats, wild oats, rye, sometimes a little wheat. But I wanted to make sure to tell you about a couple of ‘nuisance’ grasses: the Foxtail and the Needlegrass. The ‘seeds’ of both have sharp points on one end, and bristles like ‘quills’ on the other end. The quills push the sharp point end into the flesh of us animals – between the toes of dogs and cats, where the skin is soft and thin. If eaten by cats or dogs or even horses, the seeds can become stuck in the throat and burrow through the flesh of the neck, causing abscesses. My mom even saw a little cat that was killed by them – the needles traveled through the kitty’s body and lodged in the kitty’s liver, causing abscesses in the liver. One of my aunts got one stuck between her teeth and it burrowed into her gums and caused an abscess there.
The Purple Needlegrass is the easiest to spot – the seeds turn ‘burgundy’ in color as they ripen. The foxtail’s seeds turn golden, just like the rest of their plant. Here are a couple of pictures (I hope your computer will let the pictures come through.)
Any of the grasses of the genus Stipa (family Poaceae), consisting of about 150 species with a sharply pointed grain and a long, threadlike awn (bristle). In some species, such as porcupine grass (Stipa spartea
), the sharp grain may puncture the faces of grazing animals. (Encyclopedia Brittanica.)
This one is a picture of Foxtail:
(Photo courtesy of : File:Hordeum murinum in Voorhis Ecological Reserve,Cal Poly Pomona.jpg)
