What Makes Grasses Attractive Ornamentals, and Where?

This chapter concentrates on two grass groups: Turf grasses and grasses with attractive inflorescences or coloured foliage. Turf grasses are cultivated in recreational areas, on sports fields, in parks, as lawns on private property or for example in cemeteries. They are usually classified by their adaptation to temperature. Warm season grasses grow best at temperatures above 25 °C, whereas cool season grasses prefer temperatures around or slightly above 15 °C by a rule of thumb. Greening of surfaces is highly regulated in some countries. The German Institute for Standardization for example has issued a number of guidelines on vegetation technology. For turf grasses, two reasons make them attractive: they are green and of uniform appearance. In the case of flowering or of coloured grasses other aesthetic aspects play a role: one reason is the fine structure of the inflorescences which are moving with the wind. Some species display coloured leaves such as some Pennisetum species. A few grass species were originally cultivated as energy plants such as Miscanthus species. Meanwhile, breeding efforts made them ornamentals. Unfortunately, several ornamentals have gone wild such as Cortaderia selloana or Arundo donax and are regarded as invasive species in many countries with Mediterranean climate. A number of grass species are used for land restoration as for example after catastrophic events such as flooding, fire or erosion caused by wind.