Poverty grass is a common name for several plants and may refer to:
*Any of several
grass
Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns an ...
es that grow in poor or sandy soil, for example:
** ''
Aristida dichotoma
''Aristida dichotoma'', known as churchmouse threeawn, fork-tip three-awn, pigbutt three-awn, and poverty grass, is a species of grass from eastern North America. It is native to the Eastern and Midwestern United States and Ontario, Canada. It ha ...
'',
Shinner's three-awn
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Eremochloa bimaculata
''Eremochloa'' is a genus of Asian and Australian plants in the grass family.
; SpeciesPohl, R. W. 1994. 171. ''Eremochloa'' Buse. 6: 397. In G. Davidse, M. Sousa Sánchez & A.O. Chater (eds.) Flora Mesoamericana. Universidad Nacional Autónoma ...
''
** ''
Sporobolus vaginiflorus
''Sporobolus vaginiflorus'' is a species of grass known by the common names poverty grass, poverty dropseed, and sheathed dropseed.
Distribution
This bunchgrass is native to eastern, central North America, including the Great Plains, extreme Sou ...
'', sheathed dropseed
** ''
Danthonia spicata
''Danthonia spicata'' is a species of grass known by the common name poverty oatgrass, or simply poverty grass. It is native to North America, where it is widespread and common in many areas.[Hudsonia
''Hudsonia'' (goldenheather, poverty grass) is a small genus of three species of flowering plants in the family Cistaceae, native to North America. They are typical of sand dune habitats.
They are evergreen subshrubs growing to 20 cm tall. ...]
'' that grow up on
beaches
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shells ...
* During the
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of both natural factors (severe drought) an ...
period of The Great Depression, struggling farmers in Oklahoma referred to certain fluffy-headed grasses as "poverty grass". Those grasses had very little nutrition value to offer their stock, but would keep them from their noisy complaining if allowed to graze on them when there were no nutritious grasses to eat.
{{Plant common name