General: Perennial, tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems disarticulating at the nodes (10) 30-130 cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths smooth or soft-hairy, the upper ones usually smooth or unevenly soft-hairy, the hairs 1-2 mm long; blades (1) 2-5 (6) mm wide, flat to in-rolled, smooth to soft-hairy; ligules less than 1 mm long, fringed with fine hairs.
Flowers: Inflorescence a raceme of (2) 3 to 6 (10) slightly to broadly spreading spikelets, the branches longer than the spikelets; spikelets (10) 14-26 (30) mm long; lemmas 5-10 mm long, hairy along the margins, rarely smooth, sometimes sparsely hairy over the back, the apical teeth stiff-awned, (2) 4-6 (7) mm long, also awned from the back, these awns abruptly bent, (7) 8-12 mm long, the calluses usually longer than wide, with stiff hairs laterally; anthers to 4 mm long.
Moist to dry grasslands, meadows, open woods, shorelines and rocky bluffs in lowland and montane zones; common in SW BC, rare in SC BC; E SC SK and S to SD, NM, AZ, and CA; Chile.
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)
BC Ministry of Environment:BC Species and Ecosystems Explorer,
the authoritative source for conservation information in British Columbia.
Synonyms and Alternate Names
Danthonia americana Scribn. Danthonia californica var. americana (Scribn.) Hitchc. Danthonia californica var. californica Bol. Danthonia californica var. palousensis H. St. John Danthonia californica var. piperi H. St. John Danthonia macounii