Rice Cutgrass, Leersia oryzoides, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

	Grasses of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
	Common Name	Scientific Name	Plant Family	Garden Location	Height	Prime Season
	Rice Cutgrass	Leersia oryzoides (L.) Sw.	Poaceae (Grasses)	Woodland	2 to 5 feet	Late Summer
	Native Status	Rice Cutgrass is a native perennial found throughout the United States and the lower Canadian Provinces. In Minnesota it is widespread, absent mainly in counties in the central part of the state.
Notes	Rice Cutgrass is a cool season, semi-aquatic grass that flowers late, with the seed ripening in late August to early October. It is very valuable for wildlife. It provides habitat, seeds for food and ducks will pull up and eat the rhizomes. The rhizomes allow it to form dense colonies, which causes the plant to be called a weed if you are maintaining cranberry bogs. The stems are upright to sprawling. The yellow-green leaf blades are 3 to 12 inches long (7-30cm) and up to 6/10" wide (6 to 15mm). Leaves are coarse on top with tiny teeth along the edges which can easily tear clothing and cut flesh, hence the common name "cutgrass". The leaf sheaths are also rough and can cut. The flower head often droops and is from 10 to 20 cm long (8") and can have two or more branches from the lower nodes. Sometimes the flowering branches do not emerge from the leaf sheaths, but produce seed within the sheath. Seed hulls are covered with minute bristles that cling to clothing or fur. The spikelets, which barely overlap, hang in a single row giving a one-sided appearance to the panicle branch. The seeds do look like rice and thus are not easily confused with other grass seeds. The genus, Leersia, is named for 18th Century German botanist Johann Daniel Leers. The species name, oryzoides is Greek for rice. The other Leersia in the Garden, L. virginica, White Cutgrass, is differentiated by smooth leaf sheaths, solitary lower branches in the flowering head, smaller and more overlapping spikelets.


Photos above and upper left ©Patrick J. Alexander, USDA-NRCS Plants Database. Right: Notice the bristles on the spikelets and the minimal overlap.
Drawing below courtesy USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Hitchcock, A.S. (rev. A. Chase). 1950. Manual of the grasses of the United States. USDA Miscellaneous Publication No. 200. Washington, DC.

Notes: This grass is indigenous to the Garden. Eloise Butler catalogued it in her early Garden records- she noted it in bloom on Aug. 14, 1912. The ability of this plant to withstand highly acidic conditions, has USDA studying it for use in constructed wetlands to mitigate agricultural runoff and also for treatment of acid mine drainage.

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References: Plant characteristics are generally from sources 28c, W2, W3, W5 & W6. Distribution principally from W2 and W1. Planting history generally from 1, 4 & 4a. Other sources by specific reference. See Reference List for details.

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