By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on June 4, 2002
Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) plant for June is a native grass, Lindheimer muhly.
For some people, the thought of grass in the “flower bed” is an anathema. For others, any mention of grass for landscaping brings to mind the commonly used exotic, pampas grass.
Over the past several years, however, landscapers who have experimented with using native vegetation have shown that many native grasses can be some of the most effective and easy-to-grow landscape plants.
To call attention to native grasses as potential landscape plants, we chose a grass to be among the first plants for Operation NICE! Grasses are especially desirable in the Hill Country, because they are deer-resistant and generally require little water and fertilizer once they are established.
Lindheimer muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri) is a handsome gray-green bunch grass that grows two to five feet tall and sends up long narrow plumes in the fall. It could be cultivated as an accent plant in much the same way as pampas grass is used.
We planted a single bunch of Lindheimer muhly at a gatepost last spring. By fall it had grown to a nice shape and put up about fifteen silvery bloom stalks, which got a lot of compliments from visitors.
As an experiment, I never cut it back. After a hard frost, the whole plant turned an “off-white,” but held its shape until new green leaves grew up in the spring. Now we are trying larger patches of multiple bunches of Lindheimer muhly to mimic what we admire in the natural meadows back of our property.
Lindheimer muhly likes the calcareous soils that prevail around Boerne and seems to prefer poorly drained soils that hold moisture. Even where it flourishes on steep slopes, it is generally growing on or adjacent to clay layers associated with intermittent hillside seeps.
However, this grass does survive long periods of drought. It thrives in full or part sun.
The white-tail deer in our neighborhood never browse Lindheimer muhly. Even on ranches in this area, this grass is among the least desirable to cattle.
Lindheimer muhly was named for the “Father of Texas Botany” Ferdinand Lindheimer. Many other native plants of the Hill Country also bear the name “Lindheimer” or “Lindheimer’s.” Most of these were discovered and first collected by Ferdinand Lindheimer who settled in New Braunfels in 1845.
Lindheimer was born 200 years ago in Frankfurt. Apparently, he became interested in botany as a youth. He left Germany for the United States when he was 32 and joined some German friends, including the botanist George Engelmann, who were working on a farm near Belleville, III.
Soon he went, via New Orleans to a German colony inland of Vera Cruz, Mexico. He decided not to stay in Mexico and made his way to Texas, where he joined the Army of Texas in April 1836, just as the revolution was ending. He spent much of the duration of the Republic of Texas in Houston.
During 1945, the year Texas became a state, he traveled to the German colony on Comal Creek at New Braunfels, Bexar County.
He settled on the banks of the Comal River in New Braunfels, raised a family, started a German language newspaper that endured for a century, and made extensive botanical collections in the wilds of Central and Southeast Texas. He sent numerous Texas specimens to his close friend Engelmann at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, thereby introducing Texas flora to botanical circles worldwide.
Lindheimer is indeed the father of Texas botany. Today his little house on the Comal River in the older section of New Braunfels is open to tourists.
