In late spring and early summer the hillside whitens: cogongrass has shot its plumes, a sheet of bright white, the wind running over it like water across grass. Dig the soil open and the roots below are white and long, jointed, crisp and sweet.

That Sheet of White in Late Spring

In late spring and early summer the hillside whitens: cogongrass has shot its plumes, a sheet of bright white, the wind running over it like water across grass. Each plume is densely set with silky white hairs, and against the light the whole meadow glows.

Dig the soil open and the roots below are white and long, jointed as they walk sideways, crisp and faintly sweet. Bite a piece and chew—a mild clean taste: a wild flavor many children know.

— The Book of Songs, “Shao Nan · A Dead Deer in the Wild” —

A dead deer in the wild,

wrapped in white cogongrass.

Wrapped in White Cogongrass

The Book of Songs has it: “A dead deer in the wild, wrapped in white cogongrass.” The ancients wrapped sacrificial offerings in cogongrass. Why this grass? Because it is clean, soft, and free of mixed scents—in sacrifice, the most reverent of herbs.

When ancient kings enfeoffed a noble, they also wrapped earth in white cogongrass as a gift—”splitting the earth, portioning the cogongrass.” The most ordinary grass was once used to symbolize land and title. Grass’s standing was never merely grass.

The Roots and the Wasteland

Its root is called the cogongrass root, a common medicine for clearing heat and generating fluids: in summer a pot of cogongrass-root water, faintly sweet, is a customary cooling drink of southern households.

Cogongrass tolerates drought and poor soil; its rhizomes walk sideways through the earth, and a patch of abandoned slope can be covered in a few years. It is the first comer to fallow land and the soil-fixer of barren slopes—but let it into a crop field, where the roots are near impossible to clear, and it becomes the most clinging of weeds.

• How to know it: Perennial grass; rhizomes well developed and creeping; culms erect; panicles contracted into plumes, densely silky-white haired.
• When to enjoy: Plumes heaviest April–June; a sheet of white waving with the wind; in autumn and winter, see the dry plumes.
• Caution: Though the root medicine is mild, it is still a herbal remedy; consult a physician before special constitutions or long-term use.

Every Part Is Usable

The plumes serve as filling—old pillows and insoles; stems and leaves make forage and rope; the rhizomes make paper and can also yield sugar. The thatch in a thatched cottage is this very grass.

From the clean thing on the altar, to a layer of thatch on a roof, to a wild weed everyone curses at the field’s edge—cogongrass has not changed its look; it is the human world that keeps changing its place.

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Keywords: cogongrass · Book of Songs · cogongrass root · wasteland