General: Perennial, tufted grass from fibrous roots, some shoots non-flowering; stems 10-40 cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths smooth; blades 2.5-13 cm long, 1-3 mm wide, flat; ligules 1.5-3 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence broadly egg-shaped to lanceolate, usually open, loose or more or less constricted, 3-10 cm long, at least twice as long as wide, the branches more or less stiff, ascending or appressed, the lower branches to 4 cm long, branching above the middle, the spikelets sparse, borne mostly above the midpoints; spikelets usually 1.8-3 mm long; glumes 2.5-3.8 mm long; lemmas 1.6-2.6 mm long, the awns attached just below the middle from the back, 3-4 mm long, bent, the callus hairs to 0.2 mm long; paleas absent; anthers 0.5-0.8 mm long.
Mesic to dry meadows, streambanks, cliffs and scree slopes in the lowland to alpine zones; infrequent throughout BC; circumboreal, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to SC, TN, CO, UT and WA; Greenland, N Eurasia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)