General: Perennial tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems not disarticulating at the nodes, 10-50 (70) cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths usually smooth; blades long-hairy at the throat and collar, 1-3.5 mm wide, 5-10 cm long, smooth or slightly soft-hairy, not curled with age; ligules less than 1 mm long, fringed with short hairs.
Flowers: Inflorescence a narrow, congested panicle with (4) 5 to 10 spikelets, the lower branches with (1) 2 or 3 spikelets, stiff and erect, shorter than the spikelets; spikelets (11) 12-15 (19) mm long; lemmas 7-10 mm long, smooth over the back and densely soft-hairy along the margins, the apical teeth pointed to long-pointed (not stiff-awned), 1.5-2.5 mm long, awned from the back, the awns abruptly bent, 6.5-8 mm long, the calluses longer than wide, with stiff hairs laterally; anthers sometimes to 4 mm long.
Moist to dry meadows, grasslands, shrub-carrs, open forests, bogs and rocky slopes in the lowland to alpine zones; common in S BC south of 55 degrees N, infrequent northward; N to AK, E to NF and S to MI, SD, NM, AZ and CA.
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)
A shade-intolerant, submonÂtane to subalpine, Asian and trans-continental North American grass. Species occurs on very dry to moderately dry, nitrogen-poor soils (Mar humus forms) within boreal, temperate, and cool mesothermal climates; their occurrence decreases with increasing elevation and precipitation. Sporadic in open-canopy, young-seral forests on strongly drained and shallow soils on waterÂshedding sites; often present in non-forested communities on rock outcrops. Characteristic of moisture-deficient sites.
