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Blue Grama (Bouteloua gracilis)

from $2.99

Botanical name: Bouteloua gracilis‍ ‍ • Bloom season: Summer‍ ‍ • Grass color: Tan seed heads over blue-grey foliage ‍ • Host plant (elsewhere in North America): simius roadside skipper, Mead's wood nymph, Hemileuca oliviae, Leonard's skipper, Ottoe skipper, Riding's satyr, garita skipperling, rhesus skipper

A fine, low bunchgrass that holds its seed heads out sideways from the stem, so a stand looks like rows of tiny eyelashes catching the light. It is the quintessential shortgrass-prairie grass, tough as anything, and it hosts several grass skippers whose caterpillars have nowhere else to feed.

Botanical name: Bouteloua gracilis‍ ‍ • Bloom season: Summer‍ ‍ • Grass color: Tan seed heads over blue-grey foliage ‍ • Host plant (elsewhere in North America): simius roadside skipper, Mead's wood nymph, Hemileuca oliviae, Leonard's skipper, Ottoe skipper, Riding's satyr, garita skipperling, rhesus skipper

A fine, low bunchgrass that holds its seed heads out sideways from the stem, so a stand looks like rows of tiny eyelashes catching the light. It is the quintessential shortgrass-prairie grass, tough as anything, and it hosts several grass skippers whose caterpillars have nowhere else to feed.

Size:

Plant Characteristics

Botanical Name: Bouteloua gracilis

Common Name: Blue Grama

Native: Native

Sun: Full Sun

Water: Low

Bloom Time: Summer

Bloom Color: Horizontal eyelash-shaped seed heads

Pollinators: Not recorded

Deer Resistant: Not recorded

Mature Size: W 12"-18" x H 12"-18"

Soil: Well-drained; tolerates lean, alkaline soil

Plant Type: Perennial bunchgrass

USDA Zones: 3 to 10

Spread Habit: Clumping bunchgrass

Available As: Live plant

Native Region: Western Great Plains; Northwestern Great Plains; Colorado Plateau; Chihuahuan Desert

Host Plant (Elsewhere in North America): simius roadside skipper, Mead's wood nymph, Hemileuca oliviae, Leonard's skipper, Ottoe skipper, Riding's satyr, garita skipperling, rhesus skipper

Growing Notes

Full sun and well-drained ground; it thrives in lean, alkaline soil. Space about 12 inches apart, or plant it densely as a low no-mow alternative to lawn, which is one of its best uses in the Great Basin climate. It is warm-season, so it greens up later than the cool-season natives and holds color through the heat when they have gone dormant.

  • Water: Low

  • Sun: Full Sun

  • Soil: Well-drained; tolerates lean, alkaline soil

  • Mature size: W 12"-18" x H 12"-18"

Maintenance

Cut back or comb out the old growth in early spring, before new growth starts, and leave it standing all winter for seed heads and insect cover. It needs no fertilizer and no division. If you use it as a lawn substitute, mow once in early spring rather than repeatedly throughout the season.