the advice not to do it.. sounds like something i would come up with.. to avoid work ...

never do today.. what you can put off until tomorrow... or better yet... 5 months from now.. lol ...

ken

ps: the odds of the perfect falling raindrop hitting the opening.. and flowing down the tube.. seem to me.. right up there with lotto odds.. and i still havent won the big lotto ...

And western salvias.

Ken for me it isn’t rain, it is melting snow that might fill those hollow stems of dry-loving perennials.

babs ... i was tongue in cheek ...

but.. have you really attributed any losses to this scenario??? ... if so.. go figure ....

ken

Various plants produce hollow stems and there is virtually no risk of rain or snow melt seeping down into the root crown and killing them off, provided they are properly established. Ornamental grasses are routinely cut back hard in fall......as are baptisia, monarda, and delphiniums, all of which produce hollow stems. And Leycesteria formosa. Not sure why thalictrums should behave differently.

Not sure why thalictrums should behave differently.

I only mentioned this genus as an example.

Ken, I have clearly lost plants that like it dry to our sodden soils and weather at this time of year. I no longer plant dryland species anywhere but on a slope, and don't prune them back, and it does seem to help them survive.

I tend to leave the uncut stems because insects hibernate in them and also, I am idle.

It is sort of opposite in the UK - all our rain falls in the west - the Pennines works the same as the Rockies, I think, so despite being in a small geographical area, Floral and I have completely different climatic conditions - her gardens are wet, clay-ey, peaty and lush while mine are arid and more or less xeric...on gravel, glacial till and sand.

I have never noticed any salvias, agastache or penstemon to have hollow stems. In many cases they tend to be woody but not hollow. And because they are more woody than herbaceous, I also leave them intact until late winter or early spring. But for fully herbaceous, die-to-the-ground perennials, hollow stemed or not, a late fall or early winter hard prune/cut back is SOP.

It is very tricky to generalize about US and Canadian climates :-) We get most of our annual precipitation here in the PNW in winter and soils are slow to dry and warm up. Exceptional drainage is required for these sorts of xeric plants to succeed here. But we also do not get the volume of precipitation (and certainly not snow!!) that much of the midwest and east coast does.

I wouldn't worry about it (and I don't) -- even if moisture does get into the hollow stems, that's probably not what does them it --> more than likely, it's planting in conditions they don't like/less than optimal drainage that's the problem.