It doesn’t sound as soul-nurturing as braiding sweetgrass, but pulling stiltgrass has its rewards, including surprise encounters with frogs and turtles and the chance to create more habitat. Check out my list of 20 favorite natives for reclaiming ground.
By this time of year, I’ve measured many of my days in blades of stiltgrass. My calendar has been filled with the usual to-dos. But bookending those obligatory deadlines and appointments is the same morning and evening ritual, fluctuating only in the choice of location: pull stiltgrass under snag, pull stiltgrass in meadow, pull stiltgrass in new hedgerow, pull stiltgrass at wood’s edge, pull stiltgrass at my sister’s house, pull stiltgrass in the parks.
This may sound tedious, and yes, at times, I dread the contortions required by the task and wish I could trade it for more creative and less physically repetitive endeavors like planting trees or photographing bees. But performing the same routine day after day brings unexpected rewards. Pulling stiltgrass is a form of meditation and daydreaming, a way to ease my mind and also let it wander. It’s a time of discovery, when I can make chance observations and still get something done—or perhaps undo some of the damage we humans have wrought.
Known scientifically as Microstegium vimineum and accidentally introduced from Asia in the early 1900s, stiltgrass grew on this land before we arrived, inhabiting patchy lawn areas under trees and sweeping through the woodland behind us. But so did the pokeweeds and the Joe Pyes, the clearweeds and the black raspberries, the purpletops and the broomsedges, the lady ferns and the Christmas ferns. These native plants were lonely and scattered, having been mowed and smothered for so many years after this once-marshy land was filled in for development. Applying herbicides—or killing all these plants just to get rid of one introduced one—was never even a consideration. So we trimmed and mowed in some areas and dug and pulled in others. Eventually we chose not to mow at all. There is simply too much life in the meadow, in the burgeoning mini-woodlands, and yes, even in the stiltgrass.
I have nothing against stiltgrass or any other plant. All of them are beautiful in different ways, and all of them have ancestors who came from somewhere where they were a part of a thriving, diverse community. I admire their resilience and grow weary of the social-media rhetoric that demonizes plants and animals who ended up outside their home ranges through no fault of their own. It’s spiritually and emotionally corrosive. It also feeds too easily into the destructive narrative that falsely equates native plant advocacy with xenophobia.
More Weaving, Less Warrior-ing
So where does that leave us in the discussion of removal of introduced species? I do it gradually, trying to avoid overwhelming native plants that are also looking to survive in this altered habitat. Unfortunately the idea that habitat starts with a blank slate—and is rebuilt from the ground up by and for humans—is still all too ingrained. I once watched a volunteer Weed Warrior characterize native species like frost aster as “weeds” in need of removal, a practice that just frees up more bare earth where introduced species can continue to spread.
When pulling stiltgrass or other nonnative plants that aren’t as helpful to wildlife, I leave every indigenous species sprouting underneath or nearby, knowing they’ll all weave together eventually. Some, like nimblewill and Eastern woodland sedge and false nettle, started doing so on their own, with no help from me. Others, like lyreleaf sage and golden ragwort, are species I added purposefully to spark competition. Each year these plants expand their reach, and I pull stiltgrass around their ever-widening circles to give them enough breathing room. Less often, we also use a trimmer in areas that I can’t get to fast enough.
A combination of these three methods helps us gain ground for the long haul: 1) pulling stiltgrass and other nonnatives from an otherwise bare area and then planting native seedlings in their place; 2) pulling stiltgrass carefully around existing native vegetation and adding more transplants to help fill the space; and 3) pulling stiltgrass and temporarily repressing its reseeding by spot-mulching around existing native growth with wood chips, newspaper and mulch, or other organic matter. (See “What Lies Beneath: Treasures in the Seedbank” and “The Plants Are Coming Home” for more about these remove-and-replace methods.)
The List: 20 Favorite Helpful Plant Partners
To help others engage in similar habitat-enhancing efforts, I’ve compiled a list (in no particular order) of some of my favorite spreading natives, based on the following criteria: the plants should be resilient to nibbling so they can hold the ground without much intervention; they should be capable of spreading into new territory even under pressure from stiltgrass and other species encroaching on wildlife habitat; and they should be valuable to our wild friends (a requirement all natives generally meet anyway).
Many of these species occur in large sections of the Eastern and central U.S., but you can confirm native ranges by checking with your local native plant society, iNaturalist, or online resources such as Biota of North American Program (BONAP) or the USDA Plants Database. Even when a given species is outside your range, you can often find similar or related plants native to your area.
1. Elephant’s Foot (Elephantopus carolinianus)
Elephant’s foot is named for its oblong basal leaves that cover the ground in dense stands by early summer. Flowers appear to float on stems about two feet high. Many small native bees and butterflies, including buckeyes and skippers, visit the blooms. I’ve planted elephant’s foot on slopes, under tree canopies and among other vigorous perennials; in my habitat, it seems to do best with morning sun and afternoon shade.
2. Robin’s Plantain (Erigeron pulchellus)
In the same genus as annual fleabanes, Robin’s plantain is perennial, leafing out and flowering in spring. The green-grey leaves and stems sparkle in the sunlight and weave through the ground in close-knit patches before annual stiltgrass even has a chance to germinate, effectively shading it out. Though the blooms are sometimes tasty to mammals (as well as bees and micromoths), the foliage is rarely if ever eaten in our space.
3. Aromatic asters (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium)
Aromatic asters are survivors, even seeding into asphalt during droughty summers and flowering contentedly. The relatively low, bushy growth makes these plants ideal near pathways traversed by deer and rabbits, who tend to avoid the anise-scented leaves. Like other asters, this one is a magnet for late-season pollinators.
4. Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare)
“You’ll be mad at me for giving this to you!” my friend Toni Genberg said as we planted wild basil she’d brought to my garden. As longtime volunteer for Earth Sangha in Virginia and the creator of the Choose Natives website, Toni has given me many species from the local-ecotype nursery, and I am nothing but grateful. Bumblebees, skippers, sulphur butterflies and other insects adore the flowers of wild basil, but deer, rabbits and groundhogs give this low-flowering, mint-family groundcover a pass as it winds its way throughout the edges of our plantings.
5. Penstemon (Penstemon digitalis)
Basal foliage of the semi-evergreen penstemons often last through the winter where I live in the mid-Atlantic, making them a great choice for keeping cool-season encroachers at bay. I’ve planted penstemons around yuccas where stiltgrass and hairy bittercress like to hide, inside tree cages that I don’t have easy access to, and among other wildflowers and grasses. Wherever it reseeds, I welcome it, knowing it will help continue to hug the ground and prevent sprouting of introduced species. Bonus: This plant offers lots of closeup opportunities to admire bee butts jutting out of the flowers!
6. Blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum)
I was one lucky customer when I purchased sneezeweed from Chesapeake Natives years ago and got a surprise bonus in the pot: blue mistflower! The purple blooms are so brilliant they almost glow in autumn. This plant seeds around, even sprouting among stiltgrass patches and continuing to spread. It thrives in both full sun and part shade, drawing butterflies but usually escaping the notice of furry herbivores.
7. Wild ginger (Asarum canadense)
Named for the ginger-likes scent of its roots, wild ginger has heart-shaped leaves and a flower so hidden that catching a glimpse requires you to flatten yourself on the soil and become one with the earth. The blooms open just in time to insulate insects looking for a spot to warm up. Seeds have fleshy, lipid- and protein-filled appendages known as elaiosomes, which ants feed to their larvae before carrying the seeds away from the nest, often to nutrient-rich places perfect for germination. Patches of wild ginger form lovely barriers to stiltgrass and garlic mustard, a European species that crowds out natives in the understory of Eastern forests.
8. Pussytoes (Antennaria spp.)
Pussytoes provide one of the best chances to see a butterfly’s life cycle on full display. So named because their flowers resemble a cat’s paw, pussytoes convey a certain softness through their leaves too, offering blankets for baby butterflies. Caterpillars of American ladies (above, on Antennaria parlinii) use silk to stitch leaves into cottony shelters. No sooner did I purchase plantain-leaf pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginifolia) from Lauren’s Garden Service & Native Plant Nursery this spring than a butterfly showed up to lay eggs. These unassuming little plants spread easily, but I’ve found that they’re easiliy crowded out by other vigorous natives, so I like to ensure they have their own place in the sun (or part shade).
9. Golden ragwort (Packera aurea)
Golden ragwort and its relatives need no introduction, having made themselves at home in wildlife gardens throughout the Eastern U.S. over the past decade. Ragwort possesses all the traits you could want in a stalwart native groundcover: It’s often evergreen or semi-evergreen, helping to hold space even in winter and early spring. Its chemistry makes it displeasing to deer and other mammals during most of the season. What’s less known about this species, though, is that every part of the plant appears to be helpful to someone: Bees and other insects visit the spring flowers, rabbits nest in the dense patches, birds (like the wood thrush above) forage among the leaves, and hummingbirds and goldfinches nab fluffy seedheads for nest lining. Surprisingly, I even saw rabbits enjoying the stems in early spring and late summer, and I can only speculate why: perhaps the ragworts were not investing in strong defenses during those times, or maybe the juicy stems were less fortified than other plant parts.
10. Mountain mints (Pycnanthemum spp.)
When looking for vigorous natives to replace degraded land with more productive habitat, it’s helpful to think beyond low-growing groundcovers. Many taller species not only hold space but spread with abandon. If you have a large space like I do, you can never have too much clustered mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum), which happily moves in on stiltgrass and old turfgrass to feed an endless array of carpenter bees, bumblebees, solitary bees, solitary wasps, flies, beetles, and butterflies. It doesn’t take much to instigate competition; often I simply pull stiltgrass from a small spot, transplant a few stems of mountain mint, and let the magic unfold.
11. White snakeroot (Ageratina altissima)
As soon as the clouds parted for a brief few hours last weekend, a variety of sweat bee species zipped all over the snakeroot flowers, along with flies, wasps and pearl crescent butterflies. Inconspicuous for the rest of the season, it comes into its own when most other flowers are starting to wane, making this plant a lifesaver for late-season pollinators. Unfortunately, snakeroot has long been known for more infamous reasons, as the plant that killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother when she digested milk from cows who’d eaten it. Native mammals generally know to avoid snakeroot, so as long as you’re not raising farm animals, this is an excellent plant for wildlife habitat, filling gaps through prolific reseeding.
12. False nettle (Boehmeria cylindrica)
In the decade since false nettle volunteered near the woods behind us, it has seeded into more shady areas each season, inserting itself directly into patches of stiltgrass. Though its flowers aren’t showy, this is a pretty understory plant that hosts caterpillars of red admiral, question mark and Eastern comma butterflies. By pulling stiltgrass around it, I release it from competition and widen the circle into which it can spread (though it doesn’t seem to need much help). When false nettle volunteers in pathways, it’s easy to transplant into other shady or partly shaded spots.
13. Lyreleaf Sage (Salvia lyrata)
Lyreleaf sages are never as happy where I plant them as they are in self-chosen homes, usually growing best after seeding into woodchipped paths or bare patches of remnant lawn. To accommodate their wandering ways, I’d rather reroute walking trails than disrupt them whenever possible. Hummingbirds and hummingbird moths like the flowers, and the leaves stay evergreen—or really, ever-purple, turning darker and blending into the background in winter. This plant likes sun or part shade and forms dense colonies.
14. Ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris)
Ostrich ferns light up our spring woodlands and help cool our sultry summers. These plants and all the leaves that settle underneath provide endless hiding places for American toads, pickerel frogs, wood frogs and innumerable arthropods. Fawns also rest among the ferns while their moms forage. When ferns grow into paths, I transplant them under trees where stiltgrass has been growing, expanding our mini “rainforest.”
15. Nimblewill (Muhlenbergia schreberi)
Since I first published “Nimblewill: The Best Native Grass You’ve Never Heard Of,” I’ve been delighted to watch this short shade-loving species enjoy newfound popularity. This little grass is much tougher than its pretty, delicate appearance would imply; it even thrives in the cracking asphalt of my driveway. Found naturally in shady spots, it’s a persistent competitor of stiltgrass, often growing right underneath. Sometimes all it takes to reveal a thriving patch of nimblewill is a sweep of the hand to grab the loosely rooted stiltgrass above it. Across the top half of our land, I’ve successfully pulled the stiltgrass for a few summers in a row and now have gorgeous nimblewill paths growing in its place. In many areas the grass also grows companionably among violets, white avens and other native volunteers.
16. Inland sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium)
Inland sea oats, also called river oats, has an especially wide range across the Eastern and Southern U.S. When I spoke a few years ago at a symposium in Oklahoma, I learned of another delightful common name: “fish on a fishing pole.” Whatever you call this grass, it’s luminous in late-season light. It’s also a host plant for some moths and butterflies, including northern pearly eyes. And by gaining ground every year, perennial sea oats have an advantage over annual stiltgrass, filling areas quickly through reseeding and fibrous roots. Some people with smaller gardens avoid sea oats because it can outcompete less vigorous or shorter-lived natives, but I’m grateful for this grass’s generosity in my two-acre space.
17. Golden alexander (Zizia aurea)
Why replant annual parsley and dill every year for caterpillars when you only have to plant this native perennial once and be done, watching it spread into more and more spaces year after year? Not only is golden alexander a host plant for black swallowtail butterflies, but it’s rambunctious once established, holding the ground and then some. The flowers also provide pollen to Andrena ziziae, a specialist mining bee.
18. Eastern woodland sedge (Carex blanda)
You can’t go wrong with any of the Carexes, but if I had to choose just one for my habitat, it would probably be Eastern woodland sedge. Evergreen to semi-evergreen, depending on how extreme our erratic winter decides to be in a given year, this sedge is nibbled by my mammal friends in the winter but bounces back in spring. A pioneering reseeder, it doesn’t often stay in any one place for the long term, but its love of disturbed areas means we’ll always enjoy this plant’s ability to fill in gaps and forge colonies among the fleabanes, violets and other flowers.
19. Beaked panic grass (Coleataenia anceps)
Beaked panic grass doesn’t retreat from stiltgrass territory; it moves right in, spreading by rhizome and seed. Stiltgrass still comes up in the gaps, but by pulling it each year, I’ve worked alongside this grass to help shift the balance to natives in a moist spot near the woods. Now beaked panic grass is growing all the way from the path to the sycamores near the neighbor’s pine treeline. Because this area stays fairly wet, I’ve started mixing in cardinal flower and other water-loving perennials to fill the spaces between.
20. Violets (Viola spp.)
Last but never least, violets are often hiding among the stiltgrass patches, just waiting to be released. And sometimes there are butterflies on the wing—and waiting in the wings!—to lay eggs on those violets, as you can see at around the one-minute mark in this video I made about violets during the first year of the pandemic:
A Partnership with Plants
No single plant can do all the things all the time. Plants get tired too, retreating and conserving energy at different points in the season. They need companions to fill in the gaps, bridging those spaces in time and place when other species are alternating growth with rest. By welcoming a diversity of plants to form alliances both planned and spontaneous, we can spend less time pulling and more time building real, dynamic communities.
[Photos: Nancy Lawson/HumaneGardener.com]
RELATED ARTICLES:
Nimblewill: The Best Native Grass You’ve Never Heard Of
How to Fight Plants with Plants
The Plants Are Coming Home (or How to Fight Plants with Plants, Part 2)
What Lies Beneath: Treasures in the Seedbank
Deer Eat this Garden (and It Flourishes)
Falling Walls and Rising Ragworts
*Thanks to Álfheiður Skaðadís for making a comment on my Facebook page that inspired the title of this post!