Canada wild rye
Elymus canadensis
also called canada wildrye, nodding wild rye
A cool-season native bunchgrass with big nodding wheat-like heads, bristled and handsome, that establishes from seed faster than any other prairie grass: the nurse crop of restorations.
- Type
- Grass · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Full sun to light shade
- Watering
- Low to moderate
- Soil
- Any drained soil, sand to clay
- Feeding
- Gentle all-organic
- USDA zones
- 3a–8b
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Cool-season crop
- Yes — takes a second fall window
- Sow direct
- 21 days before the last spring frost
- Plant out
- at the last spring frost
- Plant spacing
- 19.7 in
- In-row spacing
- 15.7 in
- Between rows
- 23.6 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Sow depth
- 0.4 in
- Root system
- A dense fibrous mat
- Working depth
- 8–24 in
- Can reach
- 5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 20 in–3.5 ft across, about 1–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 12 in of soil
Thousands of fine roots knit the top of the soil into a turf, which is what holds a bank together and what makes an established clump so hard to lift. Prairie grasses send a few roots far below the mat as well.
The habit is Canada wild rye’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- When
- Seed in late summer if you are expanding the meadow; the cutdown in late winter.
- What to look for
- Heads nodding, dry and shattering to the touch in August or September.
- How to harvest
- Strip the bristled seed by running a gloved hand up each head into a bucket, and sow it where wanted that same fall. Cut the stand down in March.
- How often
- One seed gathering, one cutdown. As a short-lived nurse grass it fades in a few years — the seed you scattered is its succession plan.
- Storing the crop
- Seed sown fresh in fall establishes best; a paper bag in the shed holds it over winter if needed.
In a new meadow it sprints ahead, holds the soil and shades out weeds for the first two or three years, then politely gives ground as the slow warm-season grasses arrive. Sown alone it makes a quick, graceful screen of green.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com