No, it isn't. The decomposed granite I've seen, admittedly in the wild, has more fines and is rougher than the chicken grit, which is crushed granite. I use fine granite grit as a topdressing on seed pots, and a larger size as topdressing on pots of alpines. It is heavy and, I think, pretty nonreactive, not breaking down over the years. I get it in several sizes from a rock company. The soil where my brother lives between Monterey and Salinas is known as decomposed granite, but it has a lot of fines and sets like concrete in the summer. There are a number of native bulbs there, so obviously they are happy down under the hard crust. The traction sand Lisa mentions must be similar to what I get as pit run sand from our local quarry. It is high up on a mountain river and is very sharp and coarse -- quite different from the builder's sand sold just 30 miles downriver in Portland. Apparently it doesn't make very good concrete, but it is beloved by plants. Some alpine growers wash their sand to remove the fines, but I think this is a bad idea for most plants, including bulbs, because the available nutrients are likely to be in the fines. The vigorous growth of plants in fresh sand here testifies to the presence of nutrients, probably not just minerals but also organic material from snowmelt runoff. I have a sand and gravel berm where the species Alstroemerias look every bit as happy as they do on railroad embankments in Chile. That was an interesting note by Paul Chapman on the crystalline structure of granite and pumice. I'll have to look at some pumice under a microscope! Jane McGary NW Oregon Land of volcanic rock