Look Out for Purple Moor Grass in the Touraine Loire Valley

Purple Moor Grass Molinia caerulea (Fr. Molinie bleue).

Purple Moor Grass has lots of names in French -- paleine, canche bleue, molinie d'Allmagne, guinche, jonchée.

 

 

It is a perennial grass, growing in clumps and up to 2 metres tall, usually in acid soils. It can make dense monospecific grasslands.

 

It is named after a Chilean botanist and for its purpley blue panicles (flower heads).

 

As anyone who has tried to identify grasses knows, the structure known as a ligule is important for ascertaining species. It's a sort of 'gasket' or 'reinforcing ring' at the point where the leaf blade stops hugging the stem and becomes free. Botany students learning grasses spend a lot of time carefully peeling back blades of grass to reveal the ligule and checking it in their key or field guide. In Purple Moor Grass the ligule is reduced to a row of hairs.

 

The grass flowers from July to September, producing long loose purple inflorescences. 

 

In acid wet heaths Purple Moor Grass forms a characteristic habitat of hummocks made from decades of past years' vegetation which accumulates and is very difficult to walk through. These hummocks shelter all manner of creatures, especially newts, salamanders, frogs and toads, for all or part of the year. The Purple Moor Grass will take over in an environment where a spaghnum moss bog has been degraded. This seems to also be important in allowing a succession of plants such as heathers, birches, pines, blackthorn and buckthorns to evolve a site. 

 

Nevertheless, Purple Moor Grass is an opportunistic generalist, with tiny windblown seeds that can travel far. High levels of airborn nitrogen, the drying out of soil and wild fires can all prove advantageous to such an adaptive species.

 

This species is native to North Africa, central and western Asia, and the whole of Europe. Since the mid-20th century its distribution in western Europe has been rapidly expanding.

 

It can be found from lowland grasslands to woodland understorey, and up to 2300 metres above sea level. It thrives in full sun but is tolerant of shade, and will survive great fluctuations in soil moisture levels. It's probably a species complex, with two ecotypes -- one adapted to acid soil and one adapted to calcareous soil.

 

Purple Moor Grass is traditionally used, with bramble, to make coiled baskets.