Oct 10, 2010 · Purpletop tridens supports several pollinator species. It is a larval host for the crossline skipper (Polites origenes), little glassywing (Pompeius verna), and broad-winged skipper (Poanes viator) (Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, 2021).

Purple Top is a perennial warm-season grass that grows 3-5 feet tall and 3 feet wide. It has a rich hue to its foliage as it develops each spring. Shortly after the foliage matures, the flower spikes develop as purple panicles that bloom from August to November. Deer resistance is high.

Purpletop is a perennial bunchgrass native to Eastern North America. Scientifically known as Tridens flavus, it grows 3-5′ tall in full sun and medium to dry soils. Important to wildlife, it is a hostplant for several butterfly caterpillars and is good forage for livestock.

Perennial warm-season grass native to the East Coast and Southern Plains of the United States. It is a bunchgrass that when planted en masse puts a stunning reddish-purple top onto fields and meadows in mid-summer to early autumn. The purple seed heads are covered with an oily substance inspiring another common name, Grease Grass.

Purpletop is a perennial, warm season grass that is consumed by all grazing livestock. It is well adapted to shallow, droughty, infertile soil and provides forage in the summer and on sites where cool season forages do not produce well. It can be planted alone or in mixes with other warm season grasses.

Photos and information about Minnesota flora - Purpletop: loose, open panicle 6 to 15 inches long; purple spikelets to 1 cm long, 4 to 8 florets; short-awned lemma 3 to 5 mm long, hairy on the veins

Purpletop Tridens flavus cupreus Grass family (Poaceae) Description: This perennial grass is about 3-5' tall and unbranched; plants can occur in tufts or as scattered individuals. The culm is green, glabrous, and terete (round in cross-section); the nodes on the culm are glabrous and green to reddish green.

Tridens flavus, known as purpletop, purpletop tridens, tall redtop, greasy grass, and grease grass, [1] [2] [3] is a large, robust perennial bunchgrass. The seeds are purple, giving the grass its common name.

Purpletop is primarily a weed of hay fields, pastures, abandoned fields, and roadsides that is found from New Hampshire south to Florida. Leaves are somewhat flattened and appear folded in the sheath and have a relatively prominent white midvein.

purpletop tridens Classification Kingdom Plantae - Plants: Subkingdom Tracheobionta - Vascular plants: Superdivision Spermatophyta - Seed plants: Division Magnoliophyta - Flowering plants: Class Liliopsida - Monocotyledons: Subclass Commelinidae: Order Cyperales