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Piptatherum holciforme is a perennial wild grass from the Mediterranean and Middle East, grown for its millet-like grain and used to reseed marginal pasture. It is a hardy, low-input grass that does well in dry, stony, chalky soils.
Piptatherum holciforme is an Old World species of cereal grass known by the common names rice grass, hairy ricegrass, and hairy millet grass. The seed of the plant is a type of grain millet.
Piptatherum holciforme grows in waste habitats, along waysides, and adapts well in moist, stony chalkstone soils in Mediterranean scrubland. Its global distribution extends across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
To what extent the cereal grass was cultivated in the past by indigenous peoples is now unclear, owing to the multiple varieties of millet and panic. Ohalo, a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer archaeological site in Galilee, along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, revealed a storage facility where the grains of hairy millet grass, along with other grains, had been stored. In Israel, seedlings of hairy millet grass are sometimes used to reseed marginal land for pasture.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Piptatherum holciforme 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.
