Welp, it’s the middle of October and the first few panicles of the muhly grass in my front yard are beginning to show up, right on schedule:
For those of you who may have forgotten your graminological terms, a panicle as defined by Walter Kingsley Taylor is
A compound inflorescence consisting of branched racemes; the flowers are on stalks that branch off larger stalks.
Got it? OK.
What that means in this case is that the flower (you do remember that grasses are flowering plants, right?) divides and divides again, sort of the way a compoundly pinnate leaf does. Here’s what I mean:
Notice how the purple stalk rises up out of the green, tightly rolled, leaf blade? And that as it comes out, it subdivides, and more little purple stalks branch off the first purple stalk? That’s how a branched raceme works.
At the moment only one of my two plantings is flowering, and with only three panicles, but that should change soon.The flowering season for this pretty bunchgrass is fall through winter and, as you know, fall doesn’t really start until late October or early November this far south and this close to the water. So in a week or two I expect to see a much showier bunch!