By Carina Magyar in Grasses — Jul 29, 2023

I: Switchgrass

A grass that's for the birds.

Clumps of ornamental "heavy metal" switchgrass. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Good morning. Today is primidi, the 11th of Thermidor, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate le panic, an American prairie grass that's great for grazing.

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This grass was once cleared away by farmers from its native habitat across the American midwest and south, but it's making a comeback thanks to its willingness to grow on land that's otherwise farmed out and its utility as a biofuel source. Its propensity to grow in thick clumps with deep roots make it easy to harvest without replanting. The endemic nature of the grass also makes it ideal for restoring wildlife land for hunters and conservationists, providing ideal habitat and food for quail and other game.

The word panic in French means exactly what you think it does, but also has pre-Latin roots in Old French as a word for seedy grass, and is usually applied to all manner of millets. It's hard to know if Fabre d'Eglantine intended for this day to be dedicated to the far-off switchgrass of Louisiana or the proso millet that had been cultivated across Eurasia for millennia. Just kidding, it was definitely the proso millet. That said, grass classification wasn't a topic of much interest in the 18th century, and it's entirely possible that for the botanists of d'Eglantine's day, a millet is a millet is a millet. It's all for the birds, anyway.

I: Switchgrass

X: Watering Can

II: Glasswort

X: Watering Can

II: Glasswort

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