← Bedfellow

Bushy Bluestem

Andropogon glomeratus

Bushy bluestem saves everything for fall: an ordinary upright green clump all summer, it then throws a dense mass of flowering branches into a broad silvery plume at the top of six-foot stems while the whole plant flushes coppery. The seed heads are covered in long white hairs and hold that cotton-wool texture through winter, backlit spectacularly at low sun, and that is the reason to plant it. It is a wetland bluestem rather than a prairie one, growing in ditches, wet swales, pond edges and pine savanna seeps across the Southeast and up the coast, and it wants ground that stays moist. It self-sows freely into bare wet soil and can come up in numbers, so it belongs in a naturalized area rather than a tended bed. Skipper caterpillars feed on the foliage and sparrows work the seed all winter. In Australia, where it arrived as packing material in whiskey crates, it is still called whiskey grass.

Family

Poaceae

Type

grass

Lifespan

perennial

Height

6.3–6.3 ft

Spacing

2–3 ft apart

Light

sun

Soil moisture

moist

Soil pH

acidic

Bloom

August, September, October, November

Bloom colors

white, brown

Wildlife value

songbirds, butterflies, larval host

Landscape uses

specimen, naturalizing

Native states

AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IN, KY, LA, MA, MD, MS, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, VA, WV