My Panicum 'Heavy Metal' have been blooming for about a month and the 'Northwind's for about three weeks with the blooms all well above the foliage now.

I think it depends on where you live and how early the start of warm weather occurs because my P. 'Karley Rose' was to its full height and blooming when others from colder areas were writing that theirs were only a few inches high just starting to put out new growth.

All of my other warm season grasses are either blooming or putting out culms except for the Miscanthus.

Most plants, including grasses, bloom in order to create seed and prolong the life of the species. Under normal circumstances, this is the natural response to day-length. Day-length tells the grass the end of it's active growing period is drawing near. With cool-season grasses, it is lengthening days, because they grow actively in short days, and enter dormancy or near-dormancy in longer days. Warm season grasses are the opposite. Shortening days signal the onset of dormancy, so they flower, to produce and ripen seeds.

There are numerous other environmental conditions which can cause grasses to bloom early. Among them are more or less heat than usual, more or less water than usual, more or less grazing pressure than usual, etc.. Any one or combination of stresses can make a grass 'think' it's in danger, and it will respond by attempting to make seed, thus flowering.

A note on grass terminology: A "culm" is a grass stem. If your grass has visible blades, they are growing from culms. Culms which end up terminating in an infloresence, or flower/seed head, are the same culms which support blades further down. In the case of flowering culms, they usually shoot up a bladeless "spike" prior to forming the flower. These spikes may be short, as in most Panicum, medium height, as in most Miscanthus, or very tall, as in Cortaderia or Saccharum ravennae.

Judging by the vigor and health of my plants, it is definitely not stress, Donn. As long as they are kept watered, many grasses love this hot weather. Mine are growing like gang busters.

Also, this is a strange year concerning weather in many parts of the country. Colder and wetter with a late onset of warm temps have been reported by some people posting here while we had an early onset of consistently warmer than normal temperatures starting in late February (70's and 80's). Seems half the country is under one extreme or the other. In any event, I would expect O. grasses grown in the South would always be further along than those grown in the North.

I don't know what kind of weather you had there in NC this year, but when I lived there the winters were very mild and spring usually came in early comparatively speaking. I would expect your grasses to be well along by now.

The warm season grasses take off as the temperature warms up. It makes sense that those with a month+ of extra growing time would be further along than say, those in Michigan or Long Island. As a matter of fact noting these regional differences, I was wondering if the reason some types of Miscanthus don't have time to produce blooms in more nothern states is based on the onset of warm temperatures more so than the earlier frost dates. Perhaps they need a certain number of days to ripen (like pepper crops) so the beginning of growth would be perhaps even more important than the first frost date in achieving that.

I'm in an unusual climatic zone. I list it as 7b-8a based on actual winter temperatures, which have not dropped below 12F for the past 5 years.

The proximity of 2 large bodies of water; the Great South Bay (400 yards away) and Atlantic Ocean (2 miles across the Bay) have a profound impact on my weather. Spring and the beginning of summer is generally cool. As the water warms, late summer and fall are warmer than usual. Winter is also warmer than even just 10 miles inland.

The sort of stress which could trigger early flowering in plants may or may not be something you can see in the visible health and vigor of the plant. If something or some combination of things causes just the right mix of chemical reactions in the plant, it may respond by blooming. Lacking any definable difference in conditions, the bloom time is programmed into its genetic makeup and mostly triggered by day length, or, to be more precise, change in day length.

Our early spring was about normal temp wise but very wet. Then it got very hot and very dry and is still that way. This is my first year with this garden and most of the plants were planted from pots in early spring. Most were decent size pots with the Adagio being the most mature of all (3 year old potted plant).

It is funny about the Northwinds. I planted a two gallon plant in early spring. Then about 6 weeks later I went back to the same nursery to the exact same collection of Northwinds and got two more. They were already larger than what I had planted and are at least a half a foot taller now with blooms starting. The first one has not started putting out blooms yet. The Northern Sea Oats was the last plant I planted about a month ago. So it seems the plants that were planted last (i.e. in pots during the early spring instead of in the very wet ground) are the ones that are blooming first.

My other two Miscanthus (Graziella and Silberfeder) have not shown any signs of blooming yet and these were smaller 1 gallon pots. My Karley Rose has been blooming for over a month and the 1 gallon Karl Foersters have done wonderful with all of them five feet or more.

I looked it up. The literature disagrees with you and so do I. If you ever take a trip south from Kansas to Texas in spring/early summer, you can observe that what you are saying is incorrect. Its temperature. The further south you drive, the more mature the plants are including the Ornamental Grasses.

Cool season grasses respond to cool temps and warm season grasses to warm temps. When it gets that warm, they grow.

If mine are stressed, all the grasses in the entire city here are stressed as well. That would include even the huge gorgeous specimens planted in carefully manicured, regularly watered beds with sprinkler systems and mulch, that have been professionally planted in deep amended soil with good drainage. According to your information, my Karley Rose must have been severely stressed if what you are saying is true, when it was blooming and two and a half feet tall a full month earlier than yours, which were just starting to wake up. That would also mean my well established, very lush Little Bluestem that is blooming is stressed as well and that is just ridiculous.

Grassboro..I wouldn't spend much time worrying about how nursery plants behave during their first year out of the nursery and in your garden.

For example, take the 'Northwinds.' Chances are, the nursery continued a regularly scheduled program of watering and fertilizing the plants during the time between when you bought the first one and when you bought the latter ones. That's what nurseries usually do. I would expect their plants to look better than the one you put in the ground. Your first one is dealing with a pretty radical change in its environment. The nursery's plants are just chugging along with no interruption in their routine.

Out of curiosity, what does your nursery charge for a 2-gallon 'Northwind?'

Donn.

LOL!
I am quite amused with the way you ignore anyone who dares to question anything you say or points out when you are being pedantic when they write a post that breaks some arbitrary rule in your opinion. Conversely, I notice you are always right there on the follow-up when its you playing "Mr Know-all" correcting others.

Donn, I realize this first year with plants being planted from pots at different times will be somewhat of an anomaly because of some of the facts you mentioned. I also had problems with perennials having wet roots in my soil. Some died. I dug some up and they were sitting in water. I raised them up and at the same time I also changed my planting mix by increasing the percentage of fine bark fines to about 50%. This has seemed to work better in my clay. I am going through the learning process of understanding my soil. It will be interesting to see what survives a wet winter.

The nursery I go to is one of those out of the way locally owned nurseries that carry a lot of unique plants one cannot find readily at other nurseries. They are also willing to get plants they don�t have. I have a feeling they get some of their grasses from Hoffman Nursery, a large wholesale ornamental and native grass nursery in central NC. They have grasses at 4 in., 1 gal, 2 gal and 3 gal at $6, $11, $19, $21. It seems very reasonable to me.

I'm happy you're amused, CG.

Do you have a name, or simply an attitude?

My name is Donn. I'm not really fond of conversing with anonymous critics.

Donn, yes I have a name and you are out of line.

Most people assume another name on forums (for example, Grassboro) for privacy purposes. I do not think that is quite same as "anonymous" in the covert sense you imply.