Sorghastrum nutans

Sorghastrum nutans, also known as Indian Grass, is a captivating perennial grass emblematic of the American Great Plains, with a wild and subtle charm. This grass has a graceful, flexible and rigid habit with green and blue foliage turning bronze and orange in autumn, and delicate flowers, which fade into feathery spikes covered in brilliant gold, adding charm to the late season. Even in difficult and cold conditions, this robust botanical species anchors its crown among rocks or plunges into wet mud, always in full sun.

Sorghastrum nutans is a clump-forming plant of the Poaceae family, endemic to the high plains of North America, also found from southern Manitoba in Canada to Texas. It is vigorous, accustomed to tough competition with other plants and well-adapted to difficult conditions, it withstands cold and drought well and tolerates poor soils. It forms a 1.20 m (4ft) tall flowering tuft, 40 cm (16in) wide, which slowly spreads to form a bush of upright, slightly spreading leaves and stalks. It has a basal rosette of arched, linear leaves and upright stems that bear delicate inflorescences in summer. These are narrow clusters, 15 to 35 cm (6 to 14in) long, carrying slender spikelets with numerous small brown flowers with yellow stamens, becoming golden and shiny in autumn, then grey. When conditions are favourable, the plant self-seeds.

Sorghastrum nutans retains its colourful foliage until the heart of winter, staying decorative in the garden. It is robust and very useful in dry gardens or poor, waterlogged clay or sandy soils. It pairs well with hyssops, catmints, shrubby salvias, and wormwoods. To create a contrast of forms, it can be combined with hybrid mulleins or hollyhocks. You can create a beautiful natural bed, evoking vast wild spaces, by associating it with three wonderful grasses called Andropogon gerardii, Panicum virgatum Squaw, and Schizachyrium scoparium, adorned with some clumps of Helianthus and Echinaceas.