Milium effusum, the American milletgrass or wood millet, is a species of flowering plant in the grass family Poaceae, native to damp forests of the Holarctic Kingdom.
The Latin specific epithet effusum means "spreading loosely".[1]
Milium effusum inhabits damp, deciduous woods and shaded banks, where it grows on winter-wet, calcareous to mildly acidic clay and loam soils, and also over rocks in western Scotland.[2]
It can be found in the northern United States and Canada,[3] and Europe, including Britain but excluding the Mediterranean, east to Siberia and the Himalayas.[4]
The yellow-leaved cultivar 'Aureum', known as Bowles' golden grass, is cultivated as an ornamental garden plant, and in the UK has won the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.[5] [6]