Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

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.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Crabgrass

Digitaria

Also called Fingergrass, Crabgrass, Finger Grass, Finger Grasses, Crabgrasses

Crabgrass
Photo: The original uploader was Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) at English Wikipedia., CC BY 2.5

Digitaria is a genus of annual and perennial grasses, including crabgrass and fonio, grown as forage and lawn plants or as a food crop. Crabgrass is a common weedy lawn grass; fonio is cultivated for its seeds in Africa.

Family
Poaceae (Grass family)
Grows as
Grass, Annual, Perennial
Light
Full sun
Water
Tolerates drought once established; water deeply but infrequently.
Soil
Adaptable, tolerates poor and sandy soils.
Temperature
Warm climate grass; grows best in warm conditions, frost-sensitive.
How easy
Easy
Safety
Not known to be toxic
Edible
Yes, some parts

About

Digitaria is a genus of plants in the grass family native to tropical and warm temperate regions but can occur in tropical, subtropical, and cooler temperate regions as well. Common names include crabgrass, finger-grass, and fonio. They are slender monocotyledonous annual and perennial lawn, pasture, and forage plants; some are often considered lawn pests. Digitus is the Latin word for "finger", and they are distinguished by the long, finger-like inflorescences they produce.

Uses

The seeds are edible, most notably those of fonio (Digitaria exilis and Digitaria iburua), Digitaria sanguinalis, as well as Digitaria compacta. They can be toasted, ground into a flour, made into porridge or fermented to make beer. Fonio has been widely used as a staple crop in parts of Africa. It also has decent nutrient qualities as a forage for cattle.

Other Digitaria plants

African couchgrass · Raishan · Crabgrass · Digitgrass · Fonio · Black fonio · Smooth crabgrass · Indian crabgrass · Hairy crabgrass

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Digitaria 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…