PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Saccharum / Silver Plumegrass
No openly-licensed photo yetWe add Creative-Commons photos from iNaturalist as they’re published.
Poaceae family

Silver Plumegrass Saccharum alopecuroides

Native

Silver Plumegrass is a perennial grass native to the lower 48 states. It grows to 2.1 ft.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 7 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
2.1 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~22 caterpillar species

Saccharum supports ~22 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 moderate genus.

Recorded feeding on Saccharum in North America, including:

Agrotis ipsilon · Dark Sword-Grass Agrotis malefida · Rascal Dart Atrytone logan · skipper butterfly Cadra figulilella · snout moth Chilo erianthalis · snout moth Chilo suppressalis · Striped Riceborer
+ 8 more species →
Diatraea crambidoides · Southern Cornstalk Borer Diatraea saccharalis · Sugarcane Borer Moth Elaphria chalcedonia · Chalcedony Midget Elaphria festivoides · Festive Midget Elaphria nucicolora · Sugarcane Midget Elasmopalpus lignosellus · Lesser Cornstalk Borer Enodia anthedon · brush-footed butterfly Eoreuma loftini · Mexican Rice Borer
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 20 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Silver Plumegrass, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Sweetgum · 90% Flowering Dogwood · 65% Farkleberry · 65% Common Persimmon · 60% Saw Greenbrier · 60% Cat Greenbrier · 60% Loblolly Pine · 55% Water Oak · 55%
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
Sources for this entry (13) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[07] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[11] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[12] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
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).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…