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River Oats
Chasmanthium latifolium
River oats are a colonial grass growing from stout rhizomes, underground stems. Individual plants, or culms, grow from one to one and a half meters tall. Leaves are about 10 centimeters long and one or two centimeters wide, with slightly pronounced middle veins.
Flowers are borne in flat, wide spikelets growing on them.
River Oats is also known as Spangle Grass, Wildoats and Broadleaf Uniola, Syn: Un-iola latifolia.
This plant is an inland relative of sea-oats that naturally stabilize sand dunes along the east coast and Gulf of Mexico. Its preferred habitat is wetlands, flood zones, stream banks and low meadows. Distribution is throughout the Escambia region.
The stem and leaf is upright, narrow and arching, alternate on the stem, lance-like, smooth (hairless) with rough margins.
Flowers occur in June to October, drooping panicles of dangling flat spikelet clusters in "V" shaped pairs, on thin flexible stems. The long stalks on which the seed heads cluster are born bright green, turning light brownish-tan in autumn and usually persisting into the winter. It is these ornamen-tal stalks that are gathered and dried for basket arrangements. New growth emerges from short rhizomes to form colonies.
