Pronounciation: Muh-len-BER-gee-a dew-MOW-sa

Hardiness zones
Sunset 12-24
USDA 8-11

Landscape Use: Best planted in groups as a textural accent in decorative rock gardens, oriental landscapes, stream bed facades (riparian motiff). Also, its fine texture can be used to visually increase the apparent size of smaller landscape spaces.

Form & Character: Upright and somewhat rounded, light, breezy, airy, soft, billowy, miniature bamboo like, surprisingly oriental in appearance.

Growth Habit: Semi-evergreen, herbaceous, perennial monocot bunch grass, loosely cespitose, slowly clumping from short rhizomes to about 3- to 5-feet tall with equal spread.

Foliage/Texture: Linear leaves are sessile, either singlular or fascicled and branched, somewhat chartreuse (yellow green), glabrous on abaxial side, hirtellous (pubescent with minute and somewhat rigid hairs) on adaxial surface. Leaves produced on elongated, erect and branched 'bamboo-like' culms; fine texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Greenish to light lavender spikelets; fruits are a reddish brown caryopsis, monocarpellate (formed from a single carpel) and indehiscent (not opening at maturity).

Seasonal Color: Faint light lavender flowers during fall.

Temperature: Highly tolerant.

Light: Full sun to partial shade, protection from intense summer afternoon sun in Phoenix is needed.

Soil: Will grow in about any soil type so long as soils are well-drained.

Watering: Weekly to bi-weekly deep irrigations are needed during summer to keep plants robust.

Pruning: Shear or burn to the ground only once every year or two during late winter or early spring to remove the copius production of thatch (dead and slow to decompose leaves because of the dry climate) and re-induce vigor. Be careful, fire can be very dangerous! Make sure to check local laws and regulations before burning outdoors.

Propagation: Division anytime.

Disease and Pests: None

Additional comments: Bamboo muhly because of its unique form and habit is not an "everyday use" landscape bunch grass. It works well as a fine-textured filler plant in mixed decorative landscape gardens in contrast with small, bold succulents and/or cacti. North American Indians used bamboo muhly for chest and bowel ailments.

Taxonomic tidbits: The genus Mulhlenbergia was named after Gotthilf Heinrich (Henry) Ernst Muhlenberg (1753-1815), an ordained Luthern minister who studied botany. The specific epithet dumosa is botanical Latin for 'bushy' in reference to the plant's form and growth habit.