The Remarkable Blue Gama Grass
When someone mentions the Great Plains, the first picture that comes to a person’s mind is grassy prairies rolling gently as far as the eye can see.
Not many people know that the grass found on the prairie is the ubiquitous Blue Gama Grass. It is, in fact, the native grass not only of both the long and short grass prairie but has a natural range extending from Alberta east to Manitoba and southward across the Rockies and Great Plains to Mexico.
The grass is hearty enough to thrive in a wide variety of climates and is an excellent food source for cattle and wildlife.
Blue Gama Grass Is Rather Low Maintenance
Blue Gama Grass is highly drought-tolerant, and due to its dense, shallow root system, it can absorb even the slightest amount of rain that might fall. Due to the dense and shallow root system and the fact that the grass grows in bunches, forming open sod mats, it is also an excellent soil binder and is nearly unmatched at halting erosion once the grass becomes well established. You would have entirely avoided the so-called “dust bowl era” of the 1930s if the blue game on the prairies of the Midwest had not been removed for farming.
Blue Gama Grass usually grows to a maximum of six to twelve inches with flat pointed leaves between one and ten inches long and 1/8 inch wide. The flower stems grow up to eighteen inches tall and are topped by a flower consisting of twenty to ninety tiny spikelet's between June and August. However, it does reproduce with seeds, its most important method of reproducing through vegetative reproduction via tillers. The grass is an excellent choice for those who desire a deep, drought-tolerant plant, especially those who prefer to use native grasses in naturalistic landscaping.
