What is "danthonia spicata"

Oat \Oat\ ([=o]t), n.; pl. Oats ([=o]ts). [OE. ote, ate, AS.

1. (Bot.) A well-known cereal grass ( Avena sativa), and its edible grain, used as food and fodder; -- commonly used in the plural and in a collective sense.

2. A musical pipe made of oat straw. [Obs.] --Milton. Animated oats or Animal oats (Bot.), A grass ( Avena sterilis) much like oats, but with a long spirally twisted awn which coils and uncoils with changes of moisture, and thus gives the grains an apparently automatic motion. Oat fowl (Zo["o]l.), the snow bunting; -- so called from its feeding on oats. [Prov. Eng.] Oat grass (Bot.), the name of several grasses more or less resembling oats, as Danthonia spicata, Danthonia sericea, and Arrhenatherum avenaceum, all common in parts of the United States. To feel one's oats,

   1. to be conceited or self-important. [Slang]

   2. to feel lively and energetic.

      To sow one's wild oats, to indulge in youthful dissipation.
      --Thackeray.

      Wild oats (Bot.), a grass ( Avena fatua) much resembling oats, and by some persons supposed to be the original of cultivated oats.

Poverty \Pov"er*ty\ (p[o^]v"[~e]r*t[y^]), n. [OE. poverte, OF. povert['e], F. pauvret['e], fr. L. paupertas, fr. pauper poor. See Poor.]

1. The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need. ``Swathed in numblest poverty.''
   --Keble.

   The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty.
   --Prov. xxiii. 21.

2. Any deficiency of elements or resources that are needed or desired, or that constitute richness; as, poverty of soil; poverty of the blood; poverty of ideas.

   Poverty grass (Bot.), a name given to several slender grasses (as Aristida dichotoma, and Danthonia spicata) which often spring up on old and worn-out fields.

   Syn: Indigence; penury; beggary; need; lack; want; scantiness; sparingness; meagerness; jejuneness.

   Usage: Poverty, Indigence, Pauperism. Poverty is a relative term; what is poverty to a monarch, would be competence for a day laborer. Indigence implies extreme distress, and almost absolute destitution. Pauperism denotes entire dependence upon public charity, and, therefore, often a hopeless and degraded state.

Danthonia spicata is a species of grass known by the common name poverty oatgrass, or simply poverty grass. It is native to North America, where it is widespread and common in many areas. The species is distributed across much of Canada and the United States, and its distribution extends into northern Mexico.

This perennial bunchgrass is variable in appearance. It has no rhizomes or stolons. It grows anywhere from tall. The grass takes the form of a crowded tuft of leaves at ground level. The leaves often become curly and persist as they dry out. Plants in shady and moist areas may not have curly leaves. The inflorescence is a narrow panicle of up to 18 spikelets. The spikelets have twisted, hairy awns. There are also some unopening, cleistogamous florets next to the leaves, and in the panicles. There is a long-lasting soil seed bank, with the seeds persisting for decades before being stimulated to germinate.

This grass grows in many types of habitat, and it occurs in a variety of forest and grassland ecosystems. It grows easily on poor, dry, rocky soils, for which it owes its common name. When a habitat is disturbed, after a wildfire, for example, the seeds long-buried in the soil are stimulated and germinate, making the plant a pioneer species that colonizes recently cleared land. It then becomes less common as other plant species begin to move in. It is a common member of the plant community in some ecosystems that are maintained by a regime of frequent fires, such as jack pine (Pinus banksiana) barrens.