Stipa
Stipa tenuissima
Always in motion and never long-lived — count on it seeding around, and on replacing the clumps every few years.
- Type
- Grass · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green · Gold and chartreuse
- Sunlight
- Full sun and plenty of it.
- Watering
- Very drought-tolerant, and it hates wet feet.
- Feeding
- No feeding needed.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Comb the dead material out in early spring.
- Mar–Jun Spring Growth
- Jun–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Dec Growing
- Dec–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 23.6 in
- In-row spacing
- 23.6 in
- Between rows
- 2 ft 6 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A dense fibrous mat
- Working depth
- 8–24 in
- Can reach
- 5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 24 in–4 ft across, about 1–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 12 in of soil
Thousands of fine roots knit the top of the soil into a turf, which is what holds a bank together and what makes an established clump so hard to lift. Prairie grasses send a few roots far below the mat as well.
The habit is Stipa’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Lavender, Salvia, Verbena bonariensis, Erigeron
Grasses, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com