General: Perennial tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems disarticulating at the nodes, (10) 15-30 (42) cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths usually densely soft-hairy, the hairs often arising from pimples, sometimes the upper ones smooth; blades sparsely to densely soft-hairy and/or rough to stiff-hairy, rarely smooth, 1-3 mm wide; ligules less than 1 mm long, fringed with short hairs.
Flowers: Inflorescence with 1 or 2 (3) spikelets, then in a raceme, the lower spikelets on stiff, erect stalks shorter than the length of the spikelets; spikelets (8) 12-26 mm long; lemmas smooth over the back, soft-hairy on the margins, 5.5-11 mm long, the apical teeth pointed to stiff-awned, the awns (1.5) 2-6 (7) mm long, awned from the back, the awns abruptly bent, 5.5-13 mm long, the calluses longer than wide, with stiff hairs laterally; anthers to 3.5 mm long.
Notes: Possibly better treated as Danthonia californica var. unispicata Thurb.
Dry to mesic grasslands, meadows, rocky slopes and forest openings from the lowland to subalpine zones; infrequent in S BC; E to SK and S to SD, CO, UT, NV 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)