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Purple Fountain Grass

Just wanted to pass along an observation of this plant.

My mother has lots of Purple Fountain Grass planted around the foundation of her house. She used the dividing method so she could get about three plantings per pot, bit it still took her a fair amount of time to get it all filled in. Today we were walking around her yard discussing plans for next spring. When we got to talking about cutting back or dividing some of her older Purple Fountain Grasses, she pointed out some strange growths that she had noticed. I looked closer at the growths and quickly realized that she was experiencing the 'seed sprouting on the stem' phenomena that some of us have seen this rainy, humid summer. This struck me as odd because I had read that Purple Fountain Grass was supposed to be a sterile cultivar. But then I noticed that the stalks that were producing these growths had reverted back to the original green color. So I started looking through some of her other older plants where they sported bits of green mixed in with the purple. In most cases, the green stalks showed the growths and a couple had gotten heavy enough to flop over and root into the ground. So apparently Purple Fountain grasses will not hold their purple color forever and when they start to revert they can and will reseed themselves.

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