LITTLE BLUESTEM--Schizachyrium scoparium (Andropogon scoparius)
Description:  Little bluestem is a warm-season, perennial bunchgrass 1 to 3 feet tall.  Spikelets are fuzzy and fluffy white at maturity and borne in several spicate branches which are lateral and terminal on the culms.  Leaf blades are slightly folded; basal portions of stems and leaf sheaths are somewhat flattened and hairless, unlike big bluestem.  Foliage reddens at maturity.  Little bluestem often exists in nearly pure stands.
Distribution, habitat:  This native midgrass is broadly distributed from southern Quebec to Alberta, throughout the United States, and well into Mexico.  It is absent in five western states.  In South Dakota little bluestem is important in the tallgrass prairie, the eastern and central mixed grass prairies, along ridges of the western mixed prairie, the Sandhills, and in the Black Hills.  It can grow well on every soil texture over a wide pH range.
Comments:  Little bluestem is a tallgrass prairie increaser and a mixed prairie decreaser.  Livestock and hoofed wildlife graze new shoots around the edge of older little bluestem plants.  Such selective grazing, under moderate use, may cause the erroneous conclusion that little bluestem is not grazed.  Little bluestem is nutritious and readily eaten when immature.  Across most of the state it is a valued summer forage and also is used occasionally for hay.  Little bluestem is seeded with other native grasses for erosion control and grazing.  Two adapted varieties are 'Blaze' and 'Camper.'  Little bluestem provides nesting, roosting, and cover for upland birds, plus seed and forage for mice.  The Lakota name means "small red grass."  Dried leaves and culms were rubbed into soft fiber for moccasin insulation.  Some tribes used little bluestem switches in ceremonial sweat lodges.
Picture and information can be found on pages 64 and 65 of Grassland Plants of South Dakota and the Northern Great Plains, by James R. Johnson and Gary E. Larson.  Published in 1999 by South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD.