Viewing comments posted by agreenerside

This plant is fascinating, and it's captivating when in bloom. Otherwise, people think it's weird-looking corn. Rhizomes on the surface may freeze, but they survive from tips underground in zone 7 just fine. I would imagine zone 6 with mulch would be fine. Always looks stressed in full sun without ample water.
They are showing flowering heads as of September 1.

Survived the coldest recent winter of -3f with only a sheet of plastic over it, which in reality does not thermally insulate. It only allows it to leaf out earlier and sheds water away from the crown, which is beneficial so that it will not rot.
They love nitrogen and "moisture" to go along with it. I gave copious amounts of blood in midsummer and was rewarded with rich green leaves. Urea is very efficient also. The only time I've seen these struggle is when they dry out or lack nitrogen.
As their crown rises to the surface each growing season, there is more winter exposure to surface freezing on the mother plant, which may result in only pups arising in spring.
Makes a great sacrifice to the first frost and may even put out another new leaf before first freeze

Awesome mottled, for lack of a better term, leaves due to a lack of chlorophyll in isolated circular spots on membrane. Will one day be a mainstay in many gardens. Severely underrated and unknown beautiful form that will be known to many soon enough. I may consider digging mine this winter if I have the time just so I can more easily divide the whole clump without having to yank suckers off the side, which in either case has been very successful four times. I have one that is doing the best and one of the other three has "gone dormant" rather early this year due to drying out, overexposure, and mainly poor siting... Not sure if it can get enough water and often my main clump is in a flood zone during winter.