Homegrown Habitat, February 2025: Little Bluestem
Many songbirds eat little bluestem’s high-value seeds in winter. Photo by Joshua Mayer from Madison, WI, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Our Homegrown Habitat author, Sarah Middeleer, handed in her February piece on time but I couldn’t get to it in the rush to tick things off my to-do list before going on vacation two weeks ago. My apologies. The good news is that Sarah’s piece, about a beautiful native grass, is fascinating and still timely. And March’s Homegrown Habitat will follow in a week or two. — Tom Andersen
It may seem odd to write about a grass in winter. But the striking fall and winter beauty of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) is actually why this highly ornamental native grass is featured this month.
Also called prairie beardgrass, little bluestem is native to much of the United States, including Connecticut, and was once one of the dominant species in both the shortgrass and tallgrass prairies of the midwest. It has long been one of my favorite grasses both in the wild and in the garden, but of course it wouldn’t appear here unless it had high ecological value as well.
Growing two feet to four feet tall and 1-½ feet to two feet wide, little bluestem is easy to find a spot for in the garden. It thrives in full sun but will tolerate some shade. Bluestem even does well in containers. In the wild it will often colonize disturbed areas of either acidic or alkaline soils, making it a terrific candidate for planting on sites where new construction has taken place. Little bluestem tolerates infertile soil, sand, clay, heat, humidity, and occasional inundation. Its deep roots help to control soil erosion and, once established, it is very drought tolerant. Avoid fertilizers and overly rich soil, which can cause flopping and poor autumn coloration.
Little bluestem is a warm-season grass, meaning it grows actively in warm months and goes dormant in winter. (By contrast, most lawn grasses start growing in colder temperatures and go dormant by summer.) Little bluestem has an upright form with slender, arching leaves rising above clumped basal foliage. During the growing season, its stems and leaves are blue-green. In August purplish-bronze flowers appear on three-inch-long racemes (linear clusters) above the foliage. By autumn the stems turn copper and red, and together with the silver, feathery dried flowers, create a dramatic display—especially when backlit by the sun. Most grasses and other herbaceous plants don’t hold up well—if at all—in winter, but this trooper is a delight to behold during the cold months, especially en masse. Snow sets off the tawny hues of little bluestem in winter to great effect.
Many songbirds, including finches, juncos, sparrows (chipping, field, and tree), eat the high-value seeds in winter. The basal clumps of little bluestem provide excellent nesting habitat for grassland birds, including meadowlarks (assuming the habitat is large enough for meadowlarks — they need about 100 acres to establish a population). Queen bumblebees overwinter in the clumps, and dusky skipper caterpillars overwinter in “tube tents” above the clumps. Numerous other butterflies and moths also use bluestem as a host plant, their larvae serving as an important food source for songbird nestlings in spring and summer. Little bluestem is said to be deer and rabbit resistant, although sources are somewhat contradictory about its appeal to deer.
Eastern Meadowlark will nest in little bluesteam, assuming the meadow is large enough for them. You can find little bluestem at several Connecticut Audubon sanctuaries, including the Bafflin Sanctuary in Pomfret. This photo was taken in Rhode Island. Doug McGrady from Warwick, RI, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Little bluestem is suitable for pollinator, rain, rock, and winter gardens, and it is also a good plant for meadows, pond banks, and woodland edges. Due to its late start in spring, a recommendation is to plant bluestem with early bloomers such as sundial lupine, bird’s foot violet, or three-toothed cinquefoil. It is excellent for seaside conditions, where good companion plants include bearberry, seaside goldenrod, and serviceberry. It is not considered aggressive. In my experience, little bluestem is most effective in broad sweeps, strikingly so amongst rock outcrops; but this elegant native grass is a welcome addition in any quantity to many garden settings.
Authors recommend cutting back the old stems in late winter or early spring–but waiting for a stretch of warmer weather, which allows overwintering insects to emerge from the stems at their own pace, is another option. If you do cut the grass back before warm weather arrives, lay the cut stems carefully in a sheltered location to allow the insects to stay safe until they are ready to emerge.
Little bluestem can be found growing at the Pomfret, Trail Wood, Deer Pond Farm and Stratford Point sanctuaries of the Connecticut Audubon Society.
Do you have little bluestem on your property? Drop us a line to describe your experience with it. Reader photos are always welcome: homegrown@ctaudubon.org
Resources
Books
Rick Darke, The Encyclopedia of Grasses for Livable Landscapes, Timber Press, 2007
Mark Richardson and Dan Jaffe, Native Plants for New England Gardens, Globe Pequot, 2018
Websites
Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) Plant Guide
Broomsedge Bluestem vs Little Bluestem: Identification – bplant.org
Schizachyrium scoparium (Little Bluestem)
Schizachyrium scoparium Little Bluestem | Prairie Moon Nursery
