Root Reveal: Tiger Grass (Thysanolaena latifolia)

22 Nov

Posted By kristi 0 Comment(s) 5 View(s) Horticultural Bits , Air-Pot Containers , General Interest

First published 22nd November 2025

Some time before 2020 (exact date unknown) I potted up some tiger grass (Thysanolaena latifolia) in a 9 L Air-Pot. More for the aesthetic than for root development as I really like the look of Air-Pot containers as much as I love their functionality.

Of course I never took a photo of the tiger grass in the Air-Pot, but this is tiger grass:

It absolutely thrived and was always lush. Until in recent months it didn’t and wasn’t. This is a classic sign of a plant outgrowing the Air-Pot — the root ball is so dense that there is very little space left to hold water and nutrients.

So back on the 12th November 2025 I sat down to divide it. It was only after I had cut back the dead stems, removed the Air-Pot wall, hacked off the huge chunk of that root ball with the dead stem remnants, divided and repotted the rest, threw the chunk in the compost and called it a day, that I realised that that chunk could make a great blog post…so I fished it out of the compost and grabbed the camera!

Here is that chunk alongside the 9 L Air-Pot it came out of for reference. It was about a third of the total root ball and was really hard to saw through. I was able to (also with difficulty) divide the remaining two-thirds of root ball into three plants to begin anew.

Outer view (the side that was up against the Air-Pot wall):

Inner view (the side facing in towards the centre of the Air-Pot):

The underside:

I’ll end with these photos of various closeups:

Plants in Air-Pot containers put out roots like no tomorrow!

Tags: Tiger Grass, Thysanolaena latifolia, Air-Pot,

Short Bio

Kristi Ellinopoullos
BSc(Hons), U.Syd. - double major in biochemistry and microbiology, with honours in microbiology
PhD, U.Syd - soil microbiology
Stumbled into IT and publishing of all things.
Discovered jujube trees and realised that perhaps I should have been an agronomist…
So I combined all the above passions and interests into plant-related websites and blogs, on which I write about plants, gardening, botany, soil chemistry, soil microbiology and biochemistry!

If you have any deep interest in microbiology and/or biochemistry, and how these apply to plants, I’m writing a deep-dive online book From Soil to Fruit here.

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