Sporobolus heterolepis Wisconsin Strain

Sporobolus heterolepis 'Wisconsin Strain' is an earlier, more colourful and even more ornamental selection of a graceful grass native to the North American central plains. This remarkable perennial combines a bushy habit, fine structure and beautiful colours. Its fine and changing foliage is painted with orange, copper and bronze at the end of the season and can persist in winter. It flowers in the heart of summer with a transparent mist of red-brown flowers above its foliage, delicately scented with coriander when opening. Full of elegance and finesse, this sun-loving grass is adapted to poor, dry, rocky or clayey soils.  It deserves a special place in the garden.

Sporobolus heterolepis belongs to the Poaceae family. This botanical species is found from Canada to Texas, through Missouri, where it covers vast sun-drenched areas, with its roots deep in the parched lands of the windswept plains. The cultivar 'Wisconsin Strain' was presumably discovered in the state of Wisconsin in the U.S.A. It forms a dense and rather low clump, 30-40 cm (12-16in) tall and 50 cm (20in) wide, a bit slow to establish but very long-lasting. The foliage is linear, thin, flexible and arched, initially emerald green in spring, turning rust orange in autumn, and finally light copper to bronze in winter. Flowering occurs in July, in the form of large airy panicles of open, graceful, quite showy, pink-red flowers marked with brown, noticeable for their evasive spicy fragrance. They are borne on long stems, 70-80 cm (28-32in) tall, well above the foliage. The flowers give way to small round, decorative seeds. It is a long-lived plant that is not invasive.

Sporobolus heterolepis 'Wisconsin Strain' is an ideal ground cover in hot and dry climates, and slightly wild areas of the garden. It performs well in rockeries, on rocky slopes, and in sunny borders. This grass will be enhanced by mass planting, along a path or at the forefront of a late-flowering flower or shrud bed (Caryopteris, Perovskia, Ceratostigma griffitii...). In a perennial bed, for example, associate it with Amsonia hubrichtii, another perennial from Arkansas and Oklahoma with golden asparagus foliage in autumn, with 'little Carlow' aster, turban aster with bright mauve-blue flowers, pink or orange echinaceas, or the astonishing pink hair of Muhlenbergia capillaris. This grass also grows well in pots.