Soft, velvet-hairy grey-green tufts topped with purple-pink flower heads in early summer
Yorkshire fog — 'velvet grass' in North America.
Nature · Ferns, grasses & other plants
Yorkshire fog
Native · flowers May–August · to 1 m · meadows, rides, waste ground and lawns
Holcus lanatus — Poaceae
Yorkshire fog is the soft, downy, grey-green grass whose purple-pink-tinged flower heads make a misty haze across rough meadows and woodland rides in early summer. It is a common, widespread native that farmers sometimes treat as a weed but which feeds the caterpillars of the small skipper butterfly. Its softness, unlike most grasses, is its best field mark.
How to spot them
- ▸Whole plant velvety with soft grey hairs, stems and leaves alike
- ▸Dense, cylindrical flower head tinged pink-purple, especially at the tips, from May to August
- ▸Tufted, in loose clumps to 1 m, with flat leaves
- ▸Nodes on the stem are hairless, and a short hooked awn hides within the spikelet
- ▸Look-alike: creeping soft-grass has hairy stem nodes, spreads by rhizomes and has awns protruding from the spikelets
How to know it
The main foodplant of the small skipper butterfly's caterpillars
Yorkshire fog.
Its name may allude to its appearance from a distance, misty and grey with a purple tinge
Yorkshire fog — the Wildlife Trusts.
Latin species name means 'woolly', reflecting its hairy stems and leaves
Yorkshire fog — lanatus.
Sometimes treated as a weed in cultivated grassland, yet an important plant for wildlife
Yorkshire fog.
Quick-fire facts
- •Native and common across grasslands, heathland, farmland, woodland and gardens; the Wildlife Trusts describe purple-tinged flowers from May to August
- •The main foodplant of the caterpillars of the small skipper butterfly
- •Called velvet grass in North America because of its downy texture; it is invasive in parts of the US and Australia
- •The Yorkshire in the name is unexplained; 'fog' is an old word for coarse, aftermath grass, though the Wildlife Trusts suggest the misty look
- •Reaches up to 1 m tall
- •Its closest look-alike, creeping soft-grass Holcus mollis, has hairy nodes and long rhizomes
- •Lanatus is Latin for 'woolly'
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Yorkshire-fog