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North Africa grass

Ventenata dubia

Also called Hairgrass, North African Grass, Wiregrass, Ventenata

North Africa grass
Photo: Matt Lavin, CC BY-SA 2.0

Ventenata dubia is an annual wild grass native to southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, now a weed in North America. It grows as a weedy grass in disturbed ground and cultivated fields rather than as a garden plant.

Family
Poaceae (Grass family)
Grows as
Grass, Annual
Light
Full sun
Safety
Not known to be toxic
Native range
Europe to Caucasus, Algeria

About

Ventenata dubia is a species of grass known by the common names North Africa grass and wiregrass. It is native to southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. It is becoming well known in North America, where it is an introduced species and a noxious weed of cultivated and disturbed habitat. It is problematic in the Pacific Northwest, where it was first identified in Washington in 1952 and Idaho in 1957. It was found in Utah in 1996. It probably spreads when it gets mixed in with grass seed and is transported and inadvertently planted.

This is an annual grass growing 15 to 70 centimeters tall with thin, branching stems that are naked and wiry. These wiry stems make the grass hard to cut. The inflorescence is an open panicle with very slender, spreading branches bearing spikelets at their tips. The spikelet is 1 to 1.5 centimeters in length and has riblike longitudinal veins.

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ventenata dubia 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.

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