Panicum
Switch Grass
Our Panicums are warm season prairie grasses native to North America. Resistant to heat, drought and extreme cold, Switch Grass hosts a cloud of inflorescences—a mystifying hologram of tiny red seeds that mature to black in late summer. If grown in drifts and not cut back until early spring, Panicums promise a lively winter show. After several frosty nights, they stiffen and adopt the warm glowing color and soft rustling sound of wheat.
Prized for fantastic autumn color and impressive vertical accents, a narrow upstanding clump fashions slender grayish green leaves that broadcast dark maroon and violet shades in late summer. The dreamy cloud of finely cut haze-like purple-green spikelets bleaches to beige and persists into winter, while the compact long-lived foliar column wears a buff-tinged cold-weather coat. Abiding drought, wet conditions, clay and erosion, this popular all-purpose native can enhance a stylized meadow or mixed planting, either massed or as a specimen, and hobnob with fellow natives like Eupatoriums and Helianthus.
Blooms July–October
Size: 3' 0" – 4' 0" high x 2' 0" – 2-1/2' wide.
Hardy to zone 5.
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Other selections in this genus:
- Panicum amarum ‘Dewey Blue’
- Panicum cirgatum ‘Summer Sunrise’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Cape Breeze’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Cloud Nine’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Heavy Metal’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Heiliger Hain’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Northwind’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Prairie Sky’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Purple Tears’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Rotstrahlbusch’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Ruby Ribbons’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Thundercloud’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Trailblazer’
- Panicum virgatum ‘Warrior’
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