Growing Sideoats Grama Bouteloua curtipendula

Attract birds and butterflies to your landscape with sideoats gramma. This warm season grass is native throughout the United States and southern Canada.

Include this grass in foundation plantings, perennial gardens, mixed borders, and containers. The fine foliage adds motion and texture to any garden and provides food for various caterpillars and nesting material for the birds.

Flowers appear on oat-like spikes in mid to late summer. The individual flowers are purple tinged and dangle from one side, inspiring the common name. The leaves turn brown and flower spikes a dull tan in fall, persisting through winter.

Grow Sideoats grama in full sun and dry or moist well-drained soil. Once established, the plants are heat and drought tolerant and deer tend to leave it be. Hardy in zones 3 to 9, it grows 2 to 3 feet tall.

A bit more information: This is a warm season, clump forming grass, but it does spread by rhizomes.  Warm season grasses were a major component of the prairies that put on major growth during the warmer summer months.