Milium effusum, American milletgrass or wood millet, is a shade-loving perennial grass of damp woodlands, grown mainly as an ornamental in gardens and for its golden-leaved cultivar 'Aureum'. Keep it moist and shaded for best growth.
Family
Poaceae (Grass family)
Grows as
Grass
Light
Part shade, Shade
Water
Keep soil consistently moist, especially in spring and summer.
Soil
Moist, fertile loam or clay; tolerates calcareous to mildly acidic conditions.
Temperature
Hardy in temperate climates; tolerates cold winters.
How easy
Easy
Native range
Temp. Northern Hemisphere
Climate
temperate
About
Milium effusum, the American milletgrass or wood millet, is a species of flowering plant in the grass family Poaceae, native to damp forests of the Holarctic Kingdom.
The Latin specific epithet effusum means "spreading loosely".
How to grow it
The yellow-leaved cultivar 'Aureum', known as Bowles' golden grass, is cultivated as an ornamental garden plant, and in the UK has won the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Where it grows
Milium effusum inhabits damp, deciduous woods and shaded banks, where it grows on winter-wet, calcareous to mildly acidic clay and loam soils, and also over rocks in western Scotland.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Milium effusum 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.