It is a warm season grass, greening later in the spring than your blue grass lawn, but. In fall it has fluffy silver seed heads that may persist into winter and rosy orange foliage. Little bluestem grass is native to the prairies of North America. 'Prairie Blues' is grown for its foliage that is more consistently gray blue in color when compared to the species. Photo: Wayne National Forest via Wikimedia Commons. The Blues little bluestem is an exceptionally adaptable, low-maintenance ornamental grass that provides stellar year-round interest. The seed heads are held upright, creating a bold silhouette. Standing Ovation a compact cultivar with blue-green foliage that turns orange-red in fall. Common name is in reference to the lavender-blue color on the stem bases. Little bluestem is a larval host plant for 9 skipper species including the common wood nymph, shown here. Little Bluestem (and its family of cultivars) were crowned Perennial Plant of the Year by the Nursery Growers Association in 2022. Genus name comes from the Latin schizein meaning to split and achyron meaning chaff. Many consider the most outstanding ornamental feature of this grass to be its bronze-orange fall foliage color. Flowers are followed by clusters of fluffy, silvery-white seed heads which are attractive and often persist into winter. Purplish-bronze flowers appear in 3” long racemes on branched stems rising above the foliage in August. Common wildlife species that use early successional habitat include eastern cottontail, wild turkey, northern bobwhite, white-tailed deer, bobolink, eastern meadowlark, dickcissel, Henslows sparrow, sedge wren, and northern harrier. It typically matures to 2-4’ (less frequently to 5’) tall, and features upright clumps of slender, flat, linear green leaves (to 1/4“ wide), with each leaf having a tinge of blue at the base. It was one of the dominant grasses of the vast tallgrass prairie region which once covered rich and fertile soils in many parts of central North America. Schizachyrium scoparium, commonly called little bluestem, is native to prairies, fields, clearings, hills, limestone glades, roadsides, waste areas and open woods from Alberta to Quebec south to Arizona and Florida.
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