Korean velvet grass (Zoysia tenuifolia) is an extremely fine-textured, warm-season turfgrass native to East Asia, prized as a low, almost mossy 'no-mow' lawn alternative and groundcover. Left unmown it knits into a dense, undulating carpet of tiny needle-fine blades that mounds and ripples like green velvet — the look that earns its other names, 'temple grass' and 'Mascarene grass.' It is slow to establish but, once knit in, dense and surprisingly traffic-tolerant. Two honest caveats keep it from being a carefree choice: it spreads aggressively by surface stolons (runners) and will creep into beds and over a neighbor's edge unless contained by hard edging, and like all zoysias it is a warm-season grass that turns straw-brown and goes dormant through cool weather — it is NOT evergreen in winter. Its taxonomy is also muddled: many authorities treat Zoysia tenuifolia as a synonym of Zoysia matrella or Zoysia pacifica, so it travels under several names in the trade.