fluffy karl

Calamogrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' is at its fluffy stage. Although this grass is used everywhere these days, I still love it, and the best part of having it in my garden is that I can see the subtleties up close and watch the changes from day to day. I moaned about my using it in a previous post, and I admit to still feeling guilty about using this non-native grass which requires somewhat more water than some of the natives.

There are a number of reasons why it works so well in my garden, however.

First of all is the color. When it is at its fluffy stage (when the plants are blooming), the spikes are a rose red color. When the sun is setting, the flower heads glow with almost the same color as the Sandia mountains. It is a marvelous color echo. Maybe I'll have to take an afternoon photo of Karl just to prove my point. Maybe later. You could argue that purple three-awn (Aristida purpurea) would make a similar color echo in a native, precip-only plant, and you would be correct. The difference is that purple three-awn only gets to 6 inches or so tall, and in my tiny garden, getting enough to make that impression would make my back yard mostly one species. You could also argue for the virtues of Eragrostis trichodes, which I have grown in my garden, for similar color (but in the fall) in a taller plant (though not as tall as Karl), but in my garden it also doesn't have the nearly year-round structure in the garden, and is a bushy plant rather than tall (more on that later). The same could be said for purple muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris), which although admittedly a impressive plant for a few weeks in the fall, is scraggly the rest of the year.


Then, when the flower heads fade, they fade to a nice biscuit brown that matches quite well with my interior space ("bronco brown" if you must know). When you are in the house, the color from the walls extends into the outdoor space via the sandstone flooring, which also matches Karl. Although Karl's color fades to light tan by winter, the impression of the color echo still remains. These faded stalks remain all winter, as seen in my post from December 2008.


Karl also greens up quickly in the spring, just when I am most starving for some growth in the early spring, Karl obliges by growing quickly following his annual haircut. It is very satisfying to see the growth after my work in shearing him to the ground. You might argue that the delayed growth of the warm season grass would be a chance for me to exercise patience, and you would be correct. But PAH!

The vertical nature of Karl is also helpful in my tiny (repeated for emphasis) garden. Although you would be correct in saying that Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) would provide similar form and color, Indian grass does not last all winter, and I was surprised to discover that it does not use less water than Karl. It also has a less refined appearance (not necessarily a bad thing, but as you can imagine, my garden is well manicured) in overall plant form and also in its self-sowing (a good thing for a native plant, but less desirable for maintenance). Karl is sterile (or should I say...impotent). Indian grass also leafs out quite late in the spring. This year, mine began to sprout some leaves in mid-May.

The vertical nature of Karl makes him particularly good at showing off the wind - something there is no shortage of here in Albuquerque. The other grasses mentioned such as the bushy Muhlenbergia capillaris and Eragrostis trichodes, or the tufty purple three-awn do not have this quality. This is the quality that is most useful in the winter, when I am most frustrated in living in a cold-winter climate (although some of you would disagree with it being cold-winter here, remember that I define cold-winter as being so cold that things are not actively growing and blooming). Indian grass lacks this.

The only grass that I would consider for replacing Karl is deergrass (Muhlenbergia rigens), and I've thought long and hard about this. Deergrass has nearly all of the qualities of Karl in a native plant, that has a distinctive form of its own, that of a fountain, or porcupine, rather than strictly upright. Deergrass also has the quality of catching late afternoon light in a way that is almost magical. I'm tempted, quite tempted indeed, to replace Karl with the larger-spreading deergrass. Deergrass (shown below in February) doesn't, however, have the rose-purple color that echoes the mountains, at any time during the year.

I suppose that I could design around the various foibles of the other grasses. Maybe for a later project if I get motivated.