Air Cotton Grass

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

The charming cotton grass can be found mainly in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere, and some of its varieties are generally characteristic of the Arctic plants. Cotton grass grows mainly in humid areas; you can often see it in swamps. This plant is perfect for decorating a wide variety of reservoirs - fluffy white balls will give the area a unique flavor. Cotton grass will look no less impressive when decorating heather gardens and rockeries

Getting to know the plant

Fluffy is a member of a family called Sedge. This herbaceous bog perennial is endowed with a creeping horizontal rhizome. Sometimes there are also rhizomes forming turf (as small bumps are called).

The stalks of cotton grass can be either close or single, and reach forty centimeters in height. The stem leaves of this funny plant are rather short, and the basal leaves are slightly longer. Cottongrass leaves are triangular, flat, linear or narrow-linear.

Incredibly attractive bisexual and numerous flowers of cotton grass have a spherical or oval shape. As a rule, all the flowers are enclosed one by one in the sinuses formed spirally and covered with membranous scales. They form rather dense spikelets, which gather in colorful umbrella-shaped inflorescences or are singly located at the tips of the stems.

The fruits of cotton grass are nuts (tetrahedral or triangular) with short noses, the length of which ranges from 1.5 to 3 mm.

Using cotton grass

A huge number of varieties of cotton grass are widely used to decorate reservoirs in landscape design - these are reddish, narrow-leaved, broad-leaved, vaginal, low, slender, as well as Sheikhzer's cotton grass. Fading inflorescences of this airy beauty are often used in cuttings when drawing up dry or live flower arrangements.

Certain types of cotton grass occupy an extremely important place in peat-forming processes, being, in fact, the bulk of "cotton grass peat".

Pillows were once filled with delicate powder puffs of this plant. And cotton grass was also used in paper production, as well as for the manufacture of various hats, tinder and wicks. Also, this delicate beauty in the manufacture of cloth was an excellent admixture to sheep's wool, and in the production of silk and cotton fabrics - to silk and cotton.

Some arctic cotton grass species have a positive effect on the trampling of mosses by deer, as well as on various changes in vegetation directly related to human activity.

Cattle eat this airy plant extremely reluctantly, and even then mainly in early spring. But in the tundra, cotton grass becomes the main food of reindeer as soon as the snow melts.

How to grow

Since cotton grass most often grows at a depth of five to ten centimeters in bogs and rather marshy meadows, as well as in moss bogs, it is also better to plant it in gardens in small bogs or along the edges of ponds in shallow waters. For the cultivation of this fluffy beauty, acidic water and a rather sunny location are preferred - of all the species of this plant, only vaginal cotton grass is ready to accept penumbra. For soil, acidic muddy or peaty soils are best.

Throughout the growing season, it is important to prevent the soil from drying out. Before planting cotton grass, it is necessary to add moor peat to it, and then mulch the soil near the plants with the same peat.

Periodically, you need to limit the growth of this fluffy beauty. Peduncles are best cut in the spring, since ripe seeds keep on the plants for a long time.

The luxurious cotton grass propagates by dividing the bushes in the spring or by seeds. And in fact, and in another case, it will grow equally well.