Sward Grass Compendium

Most people walk past them without a glance, but a meadow in seed is a quiet fireworks display held very still. Sward is a field companion for the grasses everyone overlooks — the nodding oat-heads, the feathered foxtails, the trembling lanterns of quaking grass. It gathers the wild grasses of hedgerow, verge and dune into a warm, unhurried compendium you can thumb through on a bench or carry into a wet field, sorted the way a botanist actually reads a meadow: by the shape of the seedhead in your hand.

Browse grasses grouped into gentle shelves — bents and fescues, foxtails and timothys, the tall oat-grasses, the coastal reeds — each with a hairline card opening onto habitat, height, identification tips and the months its seedheads ripen. The heart of Sward is the Seedhead Ring, a circular almanac that turns the year into a wheel: pick any month and watch the grasses that are showing their heads light up around it. Give your phone a shake and Sward draws a single grass at random to learn today, answering with a soft haptic tap. Keep a private log of your own finds — where, when, a note — and star the species you want to return to.