Purple Needlegrass

The Purple Needle grass is a edible plant. It was eaten by the early Native Americans that lived in California in a pinole. a pinole is a meal made out of seeds. They made the pinole by putting the needle grass and other grasses such as red maid or chia into a basket. The basket was put with coal and it was tossed around. Then they took out the excess parts of the grass and smashed the seeds with a mortar and pestle. A pinole was eaten by pinches.

The Purple Needle grass does not have any petals because it does not need pollinators to pollinate it. It doesn't need anyone to pollinate it because grass is pollinated by the wind.

The way grass is pollinated by the wind is because the seeds inside the grass get blown out of the grass because of the wind. Pollination is when seeds or pollen move from plant to plant. In this case , grass does not have pollen , so the seeds have to be blown out of the grass and onto the ground to grow , or onto another plant. Another fact is that purple needle grass was used by the Mexicans in California when they had control over our state. They used it to feed their grazing cattle in 1821.

The purple needle grass has a habitat in grasslands or pine woods. A description of the purple needle grass is : The slender root of the plant extends to a short stem with flowers with no colorful petals .