What is "poverty grass"

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.

n. Any of several grasses that grow in poor or sandy soil.

n. small heathlike plant covered with white down growing on beaches in northeastern North America [syn: beach heather, Hudsonia tomentosa]

Poverty grass is a common name for several plants and may refer to:

• Any of several grasses that grow in poor or sandy soil, for example:
  • Aristida dichotoma, Shinner's three-awn
  • Eremochloa bimaculata
  • Sporobolus vaginiflorus, sheathed dropseed
  • Danthonia spicata, poverty oatgrass
• Any of several plants in the Hudsonia genus that grow up on beaches
• During the 'Dust Bowl' period of The Great Depression, struggling farmers in Oklahoma referred to certain fluffy-headed grasses as 'poverty grass'. Those grasses had very little nutrition value to offer their stock, but would keep them from their noisy complaining if allowed to graze on them when there were no nutritious grasses to eat.