Hippo Grass Echinochloa stagnina
Hippo Grass is an introduced annual grass, found in Puerto Rico.
More about this plant
Echinochloa stagnina is a species of Echinochloa widespread in tropical Africa and Asia, with an invasive status in many Pacific islands. It was once one of the major grasses cultivated in the Inner Niger Delta of the Niger River. It was cultivated by the Fulani people, who used the seeds as food, and to make both alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages. Wikipedia →
Growing & care
USDA PLANTS · TRY- Lifespan
- Annual
- Foliage
- Broadleaf
Wildlife & pollinators
How pollinator value is scored →❧ Caterpillar hosts ~5 caterpillar species
Echinochloa supports ~5 caterpillar species.
Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.
Recorded feeding on Echinochloa in North America, including:
Wildlife & visitors 2 birds
Open records of who else uses Hippo Grass — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.
Recorded eaten by 2 birds species (fruit, seed, browse):
Related plants
More Echinochloa →
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.
Sources for this entry (17) Open & cited
Cite this page Open data, please attribute
PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
Loading…
BibTeX
Loading…