About Andropogon ternarius Michx.
Andropogon ternarius Michx. is a species of grass with several common names: split bluestem, splitbeard bluestem, silver bluestem, and paintbrush bluestem. It is native to the southeastern, east-central, and south-central United States, with its range stretching from New Jersey south to Florida, and west to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. This is a perennial grass that grows in tufts of branching stems that reach a maximum height between 120 and 150 centimeters. Its inflorescence is made of pairs of feathery racemes; each raceme contains pairs of spikelets, where every pair consists of one fertile and one sterile spikelet. The fertile spikelet bears an awn that can grow up to 2.5 centimeters long. The spikelets are covered in very long, silvery hairs. This grass blooms from August through October in the Great Plains, blooms in September and October in the Carolinas, and blooms in the fall in Louisiana. One variety of this species, var. cabanisii, is endemic to Florida, and some sources have treated it as a separate species, Andropogon cabanisii. This grass grows in pine and oak forests and on prairies. It is the dominant grass species in the pine savanna along the border between Texas and Louisiana. It also grows in disturbed habitat types including grazed pastures, ditches, and abandoned crop fields. Old fields in the southern United States are often colonized by this grass and its relative, broomsedge, Andropogon virginicus. During ecological succession of abandoned fields in this region, these bluestem grasses grow after various annual and perennial weeds, but before pines grow in and shade them out. Cattle graze on this grass, and northern bobwhite are known to build nests in its bunches.
