Bouteloua curtipendula Sideoats Grama Seed and Plants
(boo-te-LOO-a  kurt-i-PEN-dyu-la)

Easyliving Native Perennial Wildflowers
Native Wild Flower Seed for Home Landscaping & Prairie Restoration
 

Photo by Bill Summers    

For other flowers visit the wildflower seed list or potted plant list, to order print the orderform or 
email questions, comments, and orders to john@easywildflowers.com   

Bouteloua curtipendula Sideoats Grama potted plants are available, $4 each plus UPS shipping.  Please contact us by email (include your address) for plant shipping costs.

Some grass seeds are very bulky, please email for shipping charges on ounce or pound quantities of grass seed.

Bouteloua curtipendula, Sideoats Grama is a  small clump forming native grass with delicately showy  reddish orange stems with 2 rows of small flowers mostly on one side. The basal leaves are 1/4 inches wide and 12 inches long.  It is best when planted in dry to average soil with rock garden and prairie wildflowers.

Uses

Erosion Control: This grass is adapted to most soil conditions.  Successful seedings are obtained in rocky, stony, or shallow soils.  It is a fair to good erosion control plant when mixed with the other plants naturally associated with it.

  Grazing: This is one of the most important range grasses.  Although not as palatable as some of the smaller gramas, e.g. blue grama, it is more palatable than many of the other grass species.  It produces a much greater volume of forage than blue grama, and this tends to make up for its slightly lower palatability.  It remains green later in the fall and usually begins growth in the spring before other gramas.  It cures well, and maintains a fairly high feeding value throughout the year.

  Wildlife: Furnishes some forage for deer and antelope when green.  Elk use this plant throughout the year.

  Description

Bouteloua curtipendula, sideoats grama, is a medium-size perennial bunchgrass, 15 to 30 inches tall or occasionally taller.  This is the largest and most coarse of the grama grasses.  It has a bluish-green color, sometimes with a purplish cast (especially in the spring), and cures to a reddish-brown or straw color.  Leaves are coarser than other species of gramas, straight, comparatively stiff, and mostly basal.  Ten to thirty small, non-comb-like spikes are borne mostly along one side of each central seed stalk.  These spikes drop when mature, leaving a long zigzag stalk.

Adaptation and Distribution

Sideoats grama is found on rocky open slopes, woodlands, and forest openings up to an elevation of about 7,000 feet.

Establishment

Seeding of improved strains of this grass is accomplished by drilling in firm, weed-free seedbeds at the rate of 2-1/2 to 5 pounds (or more) pure live seed per acre.  Protect from grazing from date of seeding through the second growing season.  Seedings should be delayed until good soil moisture is present.

Management

Sideoats grama is not as resistant to grazing as blue grama because of its taller growth habit, but sideoats grama stays green longer and can be grazed for a longer period.  Reduced forage production, carrying capacity, and loss in cattle weight is a direct result of overgrazing.  Sideoats grama is a normal component of a large number of range sites.  The grass lengthens the grazing season and increases forage production, in addition to providing variety in the feed.  Sideoats grama will return to most ranges under good management.  Practices that will bring the grass back include proper grazing use, planned grazing systems, and brush control.

Native sideoats Grama occurs naturally in limestone glades, upland prairies, and savannas in the U.S. and adjacent Canada and Mexico. Gramineae (Grass Family)

Sideoats grama is distributed throughout most of the United States.  The map below shows areas where native warm season grass Sideoats Grama plants grows wild.  

Use the chart below for shipping charges on flower seeds, to order copy the order form or email questions, comments & orders to john@easywildflowers.com 

please email for shipping charges on ounce or pound quantities of grass seed.

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Easyliving Wildflowers
PO Box  522
Willow Springs,  Mo.  65793
phone-fax 417-469-2611 

Plant distribution map complements of USDA, NRCS. 2001. The PLANTS Database, Version 3.1
  (http://plants.usda.gov). National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA.