poverty-grass

Several miles of low barren marshes and sands gray with poverty-grass on the north separate it from Manasquan Inlet and the pine woods and scattered farm-houses which lie along its shore, while half a mile below, on the south, is the head of Barnegat Bay,

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876 Various

In some parts the two species of poverty-grass (Hudsonia tomentosa and ericoides), which deserve a better name, reign for miles in little hemispherical tufts or islets, like moss, scattered over the waste.

Cape Cod 1865

In summer, if the poverty-grass grows at the head of a Hollow looking toward the sea, in a bleak position where the wind rushes up, the northern or exposed half of the tuft is sometimes all black and dead like an oven-broom, while the opposite half is yellow with blossoms, the whole hillside thus presenting a remarkable contrast when seen from the poverty-stricken and the flourishing side.

Cape Cod 1865

The old houses also are built of the timber of the Cape; but instead of the forests in the midst of which they originally stood, barren heaths, with poverty-grass for heather, now stretch away on every side.

Cape Cod 1865

It was covered with poverty-grass, and there was hardly a tree in sight, but here and there a little weather-stained, one-storied house, with a red roof, -- for often the roof was painted, though the rest of the house was not, -- standing bleak and cheerless, yet with a broad foundation to the land, where the comfort must have been all inside.

Cape Cod 1865

We saw rather beach and poverty-grass, and merely sorrel enough to color the surface.

Cape Cod 1865