Sorghastrum nutans, commonly known as either Indiangrass, yellow Indiangrass, or golden feather grass, is a North American prairie grass found in the Central United States, the Eastern United States, and Canada, especially in the Great Plains and tallgrass prairies.
Indiangrass is a warm-season perennial bunchgrass. It is intolerant to shade. It grows 3feet7feet tall, and is distinguished by a "rifle-sight" ligule where the leaf blade attaches to the leaf sheath. The leaf is about 3feet long.
It blooms from late summer to early fall, producing branched clusters (panicles) of spikelets. The spikelets are golden-brown during the blooming period, and each contain one perfect floret that has three large, showy yellow stamens and two feather-like stigmas. One of the two glumes at the base of the spikelets is covered in silky white hairs. The flowers are cross-pollinated by the wind.[1]
The branches of pollinated flower clusters bend outwards. At maturity, the seeds fall to the ground. There are about 175,000 seeds per pound.
Sorghastrum nutans is prominent in the tallgrass prairie ecosystem and the northern, central, and Flint Hills tall grassland ecoregions, along with big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). It is also common in areas of longleaf pine.
It is adapted in the United States from the southern border to Canada and from the eastern seaboard to Montana, Wyoming and Utah.[2]
It regrows with renewed vitality after fires, so controlled burns are used, replacing extirpated large herbivores (i.e. bison), for habitat renewal.
It is a larval host to the pepper-and-salt skipper.[3]
Indiangrass is the official state grass of both Oklahoma and South Carolina.
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service lists the following uses for Indiangrass:
In the effort to revise common names to be more descriptive and less harmful, the name "golden feather grass" is gaining popularity opposed to the less descriptive "Indiangrass".