bluestem
1
8.1
- noun
- /ˈbluːˌstɛm/
- Specialized
:
grama azul
- Tall-grass prairie species include big bluestem, little bluestem, Indian grass, and switchgrass, some of which attain heights of twelve feet by late autumn.
- little bluestem
- big bluestem
- Indian bluestem
Examples
-
Tall-grass prairie species include big bluestem, little bluestem, Indian grass, and switchgrass, some of which attain heights of twelve feet by late autumn.
Academic text (1997) -
I could not make sense of it until I imagined my mother on the plains, surrounded by tall grass, perhaps little bluestem, rising to her shoulder.
Fiction book (1994) -
Bison avoid little bluestem with tillers, but fire removes these stalks.
Academic text (2002) -
Bison graze the new-growing little bluestem as readily as they do other grasses.
Academic text (2002) -
The fire that consumed little bluestem's defenses thus helped this grass's competitors through the mechanism of bison grazing.
Academic text (2002) -
But rarer prairie herbs had become still rarer, and big bluestem, the dominant prairie grass, had decreased from 50 percent of the cover to only 16 percent.
Academic text (1991) -
In the mixed-grass prairie, the grass known as little bluestem presents grazers with an in-your-face defense: stiff tillers, or stalks, that a grazer must push through to get to the green leaves.
Academic text (2002) -
The snow was gone, but the wind was blowing, and they were out on a dirt road with sagebrush and last year's dry bluestem sticking up from the new grass behind the barbed wire fences on both sides, all of it pale and cold-looking, showing dim and shadowy in the blue light of the high white stars.
Fiction book (1998) -
Farmers often plant bluestem grasses in their fields to provide high-quality forage for livestock.
-
The bluestem grass, with its smooth bluish leaf sheaths, thrives in the warm summer months.
Synonyms
A tall grass with blue leaves that farmers grow for hay
A tall North American grass that farmers grow for hay
A tall grass that lives many years, grows in United States prairies, and is used for hay
Compounds
- Specialized
A grass from the western United States that animals eat and that helps protect soil
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Bluestem is a simple plant name made from blue and stem, because the grass has smooth, slightly blue stems and leaves. That's why bluestem now means the tall North American grass often grown for hay and animal feed.