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Poaceae family

Big Bluestem Andropogon gerardii

Native

Big Bluestem is a perennial grass native to Canada and the lower 48 states. It grows to 6 ft and blooms Jul in part shade – shade, with brown fruit.

More about this plant

Andropogon gerardi, commonly known as big bluestem, is a species of tall grass native to much of the Great Plains and grassland regions of central and eastern North America. It is also known as tall bluestem, bluejoint, and turkeyfoot. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Sun
Part shade – shade
Soil & moisture
Low moisture
Soil pH
6–7.5
Fertility need
Low
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy), Medium (loam), Fine (clay)
Hardiness
USDA zone 3+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Height
6 ft
Spread
Slow
Growth rate
Moderate
Growth form
Bunch
Lifespan
Perennial · long-lived
Foliage
Broadleaf · medium texture
Active growth
Summer
Fruit
Brown
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Deer browsing · Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Summer – Autumn seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
Routinely available
Deer browsing
Medium moderately palatable
Resprouts if cut
No
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture. Its deep roots also work the lower soil profile.Open guide →
Chop-and-drop biomass — Soft, low-density wood is quick-growing and easy to cut back — coppice it and drop the trimmings in place as mulch.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Jul — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — BloomPeriod
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~11 caterpillar species

Andropogon supports ~11 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a moderate genus.

Recorded feeding on Andropogon in North America, including:

Atrytone arogos · Arogos Skipper ✦ Atrytone logan · skipper butterfly ✦ Atrytonopsis hianna · Dusted Skipper ✦ Faronta albilinea · owlet moth ✦ Faronta diffusa · owlet moth ✦ Hesperia metea · Cobweb Skipper ✦
+ 8 more species →
Hesperia ottoe · Ottoe Skipper ✦ Problema byssus · Byssus Skipper ✦ Cercyonis pegala · Common Wood Nymph Draudtia revellata · owlet moth Hemileuca oliviae · giant silk moth Lacinipolia meditata · The Thinker Moth Spodoptera frugiperda · Fall Armyworm Moth Stereomita andropogonis · twirler moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0). ✦ = recorded on this exact species.
Wildlife & visitors 3 birds · 1 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Big Bluestem — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

1 adult butterfly & moth species is recorded nectaring at its flowers:

Vanessa virginiensis · American Painted Lady
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 54 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Big Bluestem, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Cat Greenbrier · 65% Common Persimmon · 52% Deerberry · 52% Red Maple · 50% Longleaf Pine · 48% Western Brackenfern · 46% Little Bluestem · 46% Winged Sumac · 44%
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (29) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[17] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[18] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[19] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[20] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[22] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[23] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[24] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[25] Rooting depth — Fan et al. 2017 (Dryad, CC0)
[27] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[28] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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