Pennisetum

A showy, tender, clump-forming fountain grass grown for its long, soft, nodding, foxtail plumes in pink to purple that arch above mounding foliage all summer and fall - most striking in the burgundy-leaved forms ('Rubrum', 'Fireworks') that anchor summer containers and bedding. Its accepted botanical name is now Cenchrus setaceus, though gardeners still know it as Pennisetum setaceum. HONESTY: the green-leaved species is one of the world's most serious invasive grasses - a fire-promoting noxious weed that has overrun wild land in California, Hawaii, Arizona, and beyond, and is banned or restricted in several places - so grow ONLY the sterile burgundy cultivars, never the seeding green species. Frost-tender (zone 9 and up), it is grown as a summer annual in cold climates.

A graceful, clump-forming ornamental grass - the Chinese fountain grass - with a fountain-shaped mound of arching green leaves topped from late summer into autumn by soft, bottlebrush, foxtail-like flower plumes that range from creamy white to smoky purple-black. Easy and adaptable in full sun, it rises 2 to 4 feet and reads as a fine-textured movement plant in borders and mass plantings. Honest caveat: the straight species self-seeds freely and has become weedy or invasive in mild climates (a problem weed in parts of California and Australia), so deadhead before the seed ripens where that is a concern, or plant the far less seedy compact cultivars such as 'Hameln' and 'Little Bunny'. On the name: Kew and GBIF now both give the accepted name as Cenchrus alopecuroides, with Pennisetum alopecuroides a synonym. It is still sold everywhere as Pennisetum, so that is the name used here.

A tall, warm-season annual cereal grass grown for its nutritious grain - pearl millet, the staple of the driest farmed lands of the West African Sahel. GBIF records it as a crop domesticated in the West African Sahel, the most drought- and heat-hardy of the major cereals, now grown as a warm-season annual across the world's hot, low-rainfall regions. The plant throws up stout, strappy-leaved stems topped by a dense, cylindrical, cattail-like spike that bears both the flowers and, later, the small round grain; purple-leaved ornamental forms such as "Purple Majesty" are also grown in the border for their dark, bold spikes. The grain is a nutritious, gluten-free staple ground into flour or cooked as porridge, so the harvest is the crop. HONESTY: this is a frost-tender, warm-season annual for full sun that is exceptionally drought- and heat-tolerant - it yields a grain crop on hot, sandy, low-rainfall ground where other cereals fail. Sow after the last frost once the soil is warm; it needs a long, warm season, and outside the tropics it is grown as a summer annual.