Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’
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- March
- 24
Like most ornamental grasses in the Miscanthus family, the variegated variety known as ‘Morning Light’ looks particularly good in winter. The long-dead feathery flower stalks and blousy foliage light up the cold landscape and sway gently with the slightest of breezes.
Known botanically as Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light,’ this variety doesn’t mind heat and humidity and it tends to hold its upright shape better than some Miscanthus cultivars.
It’s also a bit shorter, rarely growing taller than 4 feet. And it blooms in late summer and fall, later than the other cultivars.
The delicate green foliage of ‘Morning Light’ has soft white edges. The branched flower clusters start as reddish brown and then fade to a creamy white in winter.
Miscanthus grasses grow easily in a wide range of soils, including heavy clay. They prefer full sun.
Hardy to USDA Zone 5, ‘Morning Light’ is also known as Eulalia grass or variegated Japanese silver grass.
Ornamental grasses are quite versatile. Try them as single accent plants in a perennial bed or cottage garden or plant them en masse in a naturalized meadow or as a border screening.
Most of these grasses are deer resistant, too.
Cut them back to the ground in late winter just as new shoots begin to emerge. That should be any day now, hopefully.
This entry was posted
on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 9:25 am by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
