7 May 2021
Maybe it’s a southern thing but my Grandma Searcy, like a lot of rural folk, swept her front yard. They didn’t have a lawnmower and it wasn’t like grass was going to grow under the old magnolia tree anyway. There was a brick pathway to the front of the house and sprigs of grass would pop up in the front but she consistently swept that area with a home made broom typically made from broomsedge bluestem, scientifically known as Andropogon virginicus. Interestingly, it is not a sedge but a true grass.
Andropogon is a genus found in tropical and temperate climes with at least 120 species, thirteen which are native to North America (Flora of North America 2003). Most species are also called bluestem due to the appearance of the stem at an early stage of growth. Supposedly the genus comes from andro for man and pogon for beard and refers to the white awns on the spikelets which give the plant a fuzzy appearance – like an old man’s beard. What made it especially useful as a broom is the plant often grows in isolated clumps and can reach 2 meters in height so you can make a pretty tall broom from just the plant.
Grandma Searcy made her own brooms by bundling clusters of the stems of the grass and tying them together with strips of old rags. It’s not as easy as it sounds. She somehow interwove the cloth strips among the stems and made a very tight and very compact bundle. My efforts many years later resulted in a really crappy broom which would fall apart after a few uses. Hers always held together.
Not only did she sweep the front yard but she was constantly sweeping the house. It probably had something to do with raising two boys on a farm and then having four grandkids underfoot all the time tracking in dirt from the yard. She was also not adverse to sweeping you out the door with the broom and if that didn’t work, wacking you on the fanny with it to emphasize her desire to get you outside to play and not be underfoot.
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There were always two or three of the brooms scattered around: the kitchen, the dogtrot and the front room are where I remember them most. If you complained too much that there was nothing to do, you would always be put to use sweeping the house with the broom.
Understand, the broomsedge broom looked nothing like the typical broom with a fan shaped bottom. It simply was a cluster of stems tightly wrapped to form a handle and the lower part was simply loose. It was more like a paintbrush on the business end. I guess it also looked a little like a shaving brush with a very long handle.
It was not an easy broom to use. There was an art to using it and I never got the hang of it – at least in the opinion of my Grandma. She would have me start sweeping and then tell me I was doing it wrong and then finally taking it from me and showing me the proper technique which I never mastered. What would take me 15 minutes of furious sweeping she could do with a few strokes.
Andropogon, for me, is one of the easier grasses to identify. Getting to specific level is a little more difficult but not as bad as some of the grasses. I have very few photographs of the species of Andropogon simply because it is so familiar to me I don’t think to stop and take a photo. I do get a warm feeling emotionally when I see patches of it growing and even think about harvesting some to try my hand a broom making again but I’m afraid I would be a disappointment to my Grandma Searcy.
Reference Cited:
Flora of North America vol 25. 2003. Oxford University Press: New York. p. 659.