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Poaceae family

Spike Trisetum Trisetum spicatum

Native
Deer favourite — Rated highly palatable to browsing deer — so where deer are around, expect this one to get nibbled. It's a documented preference, not a certainty: pressure swings with the place and season, and a fenced or low-deer yard may be untouched.

Spike Trisetum is a perennial grass native to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. It grows to 1.9 ft and blooms Jun – Aug in full sun – part shade, with brown fruit.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Sun
Full sun – part shade
Soil & moisture
Medium moisture
Soil pH
4.9–7.5
Fertility need
Low
Adapts to
Fine (clay)
Hardiness
USDA zone 4+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Height
1.9 ft
Spread
None — clumping
Growth rate
Moderate
Growth form
Bunch
Lifespan
Perennial · short-lived
Foliage
Broadleaf · medium texture
Active growth
Spring & summer
Fruit
Brown
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Deer browsing · Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Summer – Autumn seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
Routinely available
Deer browsing
High browsed readily
Resprouts if cut
No
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Chop-and-drop biomass — Soft, low-density wood is quick-growing and easy to cut back — coppice it and drop the trimmings in place as mulch.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Jun – Aug — 29 obs · USA-NPN — Nature's Notebook (CC BY 4.0)
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

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 →
Wildlife & visitors 54 birds

Open records of who else uses Spike Trisetum — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (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 163 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Spike Trisetum, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Common Yarrow · 34% Engelmann Spruce · 21% Virginia Strawberry · 20% Subalpine Fir · 19% Heartleaf Arnica · 18% Lodgepole Pine · 18% Douglas-fir · 18% Longstalk Starwort · 18%
By region — what it grows with near you
"%" = 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.
How we know this (3) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Growth strategy Derived

We place each species on Grime’s competitor–stress-tolerator–ruderal (C–S–R) triangle using the globally-calibrated “StrateFy” method: leaf size drives the competitor score, dense low-area leaves the stress-tolerator score, and thin high-area leaves the ruderal score. The result is a C/S/R percentage mix and one of 19 strategy classes; we show it in plain words and keep the percentages for the curious.

Honest limits: A species-mean strategy from pooled global leaf measurements — a broad ecological signal, not a precise per-plant or per-site value. Derived, never a measured fact.

Pierce, S. et al. (2017) A global method for calculating plant CSR ecological strategies applied across biomes world-wide. Functional Ecology 31:444–457.
Photosynthesis Direct fact

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.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (28) 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)
[16] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[17] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[19] Ecological value — GloBI
[21] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[23] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[24] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[26] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (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).

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