Suomi
Svenska
Creeping Bent
Agrostis stolonifera
Identify the Creeping Bent from a photo and log your finds with Florapass.
Coming soon to the App Store and Google Play.
Creeping Bent is a perennial grass that grows in tufts and often spreads into mats with long creeping runners on the surface. It is 15–100 cm tall with narrow blue‑green leaves and a narrow, often purplish flower head. You’ll see it in wet places such as shores, ditches and marshy ground.
Did you know?
- It readily hybridises with other bent grasses, such as Common Bent and Giant Bent.
- It is wind‑pollinated, so the flowers don’t need insects.
About the species
Identification
Tuft-forming grass, 15–100 cm tall. Stems hollow with knobbly joints; long creeping runners along the ground often root and form mats. Leaves flat, narrow (2–8 mm), grey‑ to blue‑green; leaf bases may be green to reddish. Flower head 4–20 cm, narrow and airy; branches spread during flowering and later close. Colour varies from purplish to brownish or greenish. After flowering it bears small grains. Look‑alikes Common Bent and Giant Bent usually lack the long surface runners, which helps tell them apart. Flowers in Finland in July–August.
Plant group
Grasses, sedges and rushes
Habitat
shore
Flowering
Jul–Aug
About the habitat
Grows on the shores of seas, lakes and rivers, in wet ditches and damp ground, on marshy edges, and also on waste ground and road verges; found as well on coastal salt marshes and very lime‑rich rocks. Common in southern and southwestern Finland and along the Bothnian Bay coast; rather scarce elsewhere.
Sources
Photo: Peter de Lange, CC0 1.0 https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/5938500143
Text: Pinkka: BIO-503 Suomen kasvisto ja kasvillisuus - Sisävedet: rantaniityt, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.40601
Text: Pinkka: A Pohjolan kasveja - Abies-Allium, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.40601
Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6nsyr%C3%B6lli
