General: Annual, tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems 1 to several, slender, delicate, hollow, smooth or short-hairy below the nodes, 5-30 cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open; blades 4-15 cm long, 0.3-0.7 mm wide, threadlike, in-rolled; ligules 1.5-3.5 mm long, blunt, minutely rough to short-hairy, more or less irregular and jagged.
Flowers: Inflorescence an open panicle, 2-6 cm long and nearly as wide; spikelet stalks longer than spikelets; glumes 2.5-2.8 (3) mm long; lemmas 2-2.3 mm long, awned, the awns 2.5-3.5 mm long; anthers about 0.3 mm long.
Vernally moist to dry, gravelly or rocky, open sites; common on S Vancouver Island, less frequent in the Gulf Islands and lower mainland, rare in the Queen Charlotte Islands; introduced from Europe.
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)
Very shade-intolerant, submontane to montane, European grasses introduced to Pacific and Atlantic North America. Both Aira caryophyllea and Aira praecox occur in maritime to su maritime summerÂdry cool mesothermal climates on very dry to moderately dry soils, and, A. praecox, on nitrogen-poor soils. Scattered in the open and open-canopy coniferous forests on very shallow and strongly drained soils of rock outcrops. Characteristic of moisture-deficient sites.
