Inland Sea Oats

Inland Sea Oats

… dense clump of foliage are the primary ornamental assets. Plants grow equally well in sun or shade and make a useful groundcover …

… has a beautiful flat wheat-like inflorescence in the late summer, turning straw colored in the fall and persisting through the winter.

… will seed around to fill an area.

Exposure	Sun, Partial Sun, Shade
Details	Perennial, Groundcover, grasses
Bloom	Spring, Summer
Height	1-3ft / 2-4ft
Width	1-3ft; seeding to form a colony
Yearly Pruning	Maybe

Very popular as a low-maintenance shade grass, Inland sea oats is notable for its large, graceful seedheads. Sending up blue-green basal leaves in earliest spring, it can be 2 feet tall and a vivid green by May, with translucent green seedheads swaying in the breeze.

By mid-summer, the seeds will have turned an attractive ivory and will turn brown in a few months before dropping off. It passes through most of winter a soft brown, but becomes tattered and gray by February, a good time to cut it back to the basal rosette.

It reseeds easily and can expand aggressively within a couple of years, making a solid mat in moist loams. It has been used to prevent soil erosion along streams. The seed stalks are attractive in flower arrangements.