Plant: The Blues - Little Bluestem Grass
Schizachyrium scoparium 'The Blues'
Size: 1 gal
Light
Bloom
More about this plant
The Blues is a selection of little bluestem, a native warm-season grass, chosen for its blue foliage and red stems. It forms narrow upright clumps, takes average to dry, well-drained soil in full sun including clay and poor soil, and once established shrugs off drought, heat, humidity, salt and deer. Fall color is a warm copper that holds through winter, and the grass is a larval host for butterflies and moths, so it suits mass plantings, borders, meadows and rain, cottage or low-water gardens. Cut it to the ground in late winter.
- Full Sun
- Blooms in summer, fall
- Hardy in USDA zones 3-9
- Deciduous foliage
Plant description
The Blues is a selection of little bluestem, a native warm-season grass, chosen for its blue foliage and red stems. It forms narrow upright clumps, takes average to dry, well-drained soil in full sun including clay and poor soil, and once established shrugs off drought, heat, humidity, salt and deer. Fall color is a warm copper that holds through winter, and the grass is a larval host for butterflies and moths, so it suits mass plantings, borders, meadows and rain, cottage or low-water gardens. Cut it to the ground in late winter.
- Flowers
- Purple-bronze racemes rise above the clumps in August.
- Foliage
- Narrow, flat, linear blades about 1/4 inch wide, blue-green in summer turning copper-orange in fall.
- Fruit
- Purple-bronze seed heads give fall and winter interest.
- Pruning
- Cut back to the ground in late winter or early spring and keep mulch away from the crown.
- Native range
- Eastern North America
