Tridens muticus
Slim Tridens

Family: Poaceae

Small perennial grass forming a thick tuft with a knotted base and rhizome growing to about a foot or so tall. Semi-deciduous in the low desert if irrigated. Fully deciduous in cold areas, and during dry spells. The panicle has short branches appressed to the others, making the inflorescence narrow. The florets are generally purple in color.

Full to part sun, best on irrigation but one of the drier growing grasses. Hardy at least into the single digits °F. Will go dormant if not watered in summer. Plants reseed in the landscape.

Slim tridens is palatable and moderately nutritious. It is eaten by all classes of livestock, mule deer and other herbivores, and collared peccary. Native grasses are extremely important plants for wildlife: as nesting material for birds as well as native bees and other insects, as habitat for many organisms, and as food: adult insects eat the foliage, granivorous birds depend on many species for seeds, and most grass species are used as larval hosts for many species of butterflies and moths, especially skippers. Many bee species collect the pollen of many species of grasses. All can be used for desert tortoise enclosures, though the more spreading types are better for keeping up with a tortoise appetite.

Grasses also play an important role in the ecology of soil, and because they are monocots, they can be planted close to other species of plants (the nature of the root systems of monocots renders them less imposing on neighboring plants). They hold soil down and help prevent erosion. Many species are pioneer plants that convert disturbed soils into hospitable places for other plants.

Tridens means three-toothed, referring to the three shortly excurrent veins on the lemmas of Tridens flavus, the type species; muticus means blunt or without a point, possibly referring to the shape of the lemmas on this species. There are 15 species of Tridens native to the Americas.

Dry plains, rocky slopes, grasslands, and woodlands; below 5,500 ft. in southern California, southern Nevada, Arizona and Utah, west to Texas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma; south into southern Mexico.

Tridens muticus on iNaturalist (alternately spelled Tridens mutica)

Photo by Max Licher, SEINET