Sesleria heufleriana Blue Porcupine

Sesleria heufleriana 'Blue Porcupine' is a small evergreen grass with very interesting blue-green foliage, perfect for dry or unwatered gardens. Its compact silhouette forms dense, neat-looking clumps, animated in spring by short dark spikes. Drought-resistant, rarely prone to disease, and very long-lived, this sesleria is great for borders, containers, rockeries, or as groundcover.

This grass belongs to the Poaceae family. The botanical species Sesleria heufleriana, called Heufler's sesleria or simply sesleria, is a mat-forming perennial native to the limestone mountains of the Carpathians and Central Europe. It grows naturally in dry meadows, stony lawns, and sunny slopes, always in well-drained, often calcareous soil. Its main botanical synonyms are Sesleria caerulea var. interrupta, Sesleria caerulea var. prorepens, Sesleria nitida and Sesleria transilvanica.
Blue Porcupine is a European cultivar distributed by the Belgian nursery Spruyt Select under the name ‘JS Sowieso’, sometimes ‘JS Blue Porcupine’. It was selected for its more uniform growth, slightly bluer foliage, good performance in dry climates, and natural disease resistance. It is a long-lived perennial, non-suckering and not prone to self-seeding. It forms a dense, upright clump from a short, tight base. At maturity, it reaches 30 to 35 cm in height for the foliage, 40 to 50 cm in flower, with a spread of 35 to 40 cm. The plant takes two to three years to reach these dimensions, then stabilises. Its mat-forming root system allows it to thrive in poor, stony soils and withstand drought. The fine, rigid leaves are linear, about twenty centimetres long, and a few millimetres wide. They are a bluish green, lighter on the underside, giving the foliage lovely highlights when stirred by the wind. The foliage is present all year round.
Flowering occurs mainly from May to July. Short flowering stems rise just above the clump, bearing small cylindrical spikes 4 to 6 cm long. They open first greenish and whitish, then take on purplish, almost black tones.

Sesleria are not spectacular plants, but these grasses offer the permanence of their foliage in winter and the rustic charm of their flowering from spring to summer. Sesleria heufleriana 'Blue Porcupine' proves to be both very adaptable and non-invasive; it adapts to lowlands as well as mountains, by the sea as well as in rocky inland areas. It will keep company with many undemanding perennials such as lavenders, catananches, pink tickseed, dwarf asters, and other rockery plants. Planted in numbers in a natural garden, it forms good groundcover, even in partial shade.