Description
Botanical Name: Sisyrinchium nashii ‘Suwannee’
Common Name: Suwannee Blue-Eyed Grass
Description: What a gorgeous native groundcover this plant is!
Suwannee blue-eyed grass is a superb blue-eyed grass. It blooms pastel blue, star-shaped flowers with cheery yellow centers in late winter to summer. It quickly grows 8 – 12 inches tall x 12 – 18 inches wide. The beautiful flowers open once the sun warms them up, closing again at night or on cloudy days. Dangling seed pods show up after the flowers fade. Suwannee has larger flowers than the straight species and it doesn’t reseed as much. The foliage is evergreen. It is happiest in a part sun to part shade area of your garden. It can grow in full sun, but it needs more water the more sun it’s in.
This is a great pollinator plant. Halictine bees, Bumblebees, other native bees and pollinating flies seek nectar and pollen from the flowers. Its seeds are eaten by various birds.
It is deer resistant. Can be divided every two to three years to keep it looking its best. It likes moist but well drained soils. Would grow great in your rain garden. After becoming established it is somewhat drought tolerant, but it looks better with supplemental water during dry times.
Sisyrinchium nashii occurs in limestone glades, longleaf pine/scrub oak communities, longleaf pine/wiregrass flats, slashpine woodlands bordering a tidal marsh, Cyrilla-Cliftonia thickets, and xeric oak/saw palmetto scrubs. Soil types include loamy sand, sand, and sandy loam.
The plant’s common name alludes to the grasslike appearance of both stems and leaves, but it is not in any way in the grass family. It is actually in the iris family. How cool is that!
Not salt tolerant of inundation by salty or brackish water. Low/no tolerance of salty wind or direct salt spray.
This plant in 1-gallon containers is 3 – 6 inches tall.
Plant Lore: This beautiful plant was discovered by plantsman Charles Webb in Madison County, Florida, on the banks of the Suwannee River.
Florida Hardiness Zones 8 – 9
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.