General: Perennial, tufted grass from fibrous roots or short rhizomes, the tufts small; stems 40-120 cm tall, usually decumbent at the base, the nodes exposed, occasionally with dense short hairs pointing downward.
Leaves: Sheaths smooth to rough, or occasionally with dense, short, purplish hairs; blades 4-12 mm wide, lax, flat, deep green, dense-hairy above; ear-shaped lobes sometimes lacking at the leaf-bases, if present then up to 1.5 mm long; ligules finely fringed, up to 1 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence a spike 6-20 cm long, 0.5-2 cm wide, nodding or drooping, with (1) 2 or 3 spikelets per node; spikelets 12-20 mm long, overlapping, sometimes purplish, with 2 to 4 (7) fertile florets; glumes 7-10 (11) mm long, the margins transparent, awned, the awns 1-10 mm long; lemmas 7-12 mm long, with short hairs on the nerves and along the edges, otherwise smooth to rough throughout, awned, the awns 8-30 mm long, usually noticeably curving outward; anthers 2-3.5 mm long.
Moist meadows, streamsides and open forests in all vegetation zones; frequent in coastal SW BC, infrequent in SC BC, rare in SE BC; N to AK and S to NW OR.
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-tolerant/intolerant, submontane to subalpine, Western North American grass distributed more in the Pacific than the Cordilleran region. Occurs on very moist to wet, nitrogen-rich soils within boreal, cool temperate, and cool mesothermal climates; its occurrence decreases with increasing continentality. Sporadic in coniferous forests on water-receiving sites, more frequent in broad-leaved forests on floodplains. Characteristic of Moder and Mull humus forms.
