The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Aira praecox
Also called Early hair-grass, Small Hair Grass, Early Hairgrass, Early Silver Hairgrass, Little Hairgrass, Small Hairgrass, Spike Hairgrass
Yellow hairgrass (Aira praecox) is a small, tufted annual grass native to Europe that grows in dry, sandy or rocky places. It is grown mainly as a wild or naturalised plant rather than a garden plant, and it needs full sun and poor, well-drained soil.
Aira praecox is a species of grass known by several common names, including early hair-grass, yellow hairgrass and spike hairgrass. It is native to Europe, where it is found in dry, sandy places, on rocky outcrops, and in heath grassland. It also grows in North America as an introduced species, where it can be found on the east and west coasts in sandy or rocky areas, such as beaches and roadsides. This is a tuft-forming annual grass growing up to about 10 to 15 centimeters in maximum height. The thin, narrow leaves are located at the base of the stem, and are typically 0.3–2 millimeters wide. It bears small, tightly congested inflorescences of purple-tinted green bisexual spikelets.
It is an annual, forming low and small but numerous tufts. It flowers from April to June.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Aira praecox by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
