General: Perennial, tufted grass from short, thick rhizomes, bulbous-based, the bulbs clustered; stems erect, 30-80 (110) cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths closed nearly or quite to the tops, but often split at maturity, sparsely to copiously spreading-hairy to merely minutely rough-hairy; blades minutely rough- to crisp-hairy or sparsely stiff-hairy on the upper surfaces, minutely rough to smooth beneath, 2-7 mm wide, flat; ligules often closed but frequently split, eroded-jagged to somewhat irregular-jagged, smooth, 1-5 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence a narrow panicle 10-20 cm long, the few branches ascending to erect, but occasionally spreading; spikelets loosely 2- to 5-flowered, somewhat compressed, 12-20 mm long; glumes abruptly sharp-pointed to long-pointed, the lower ones about 5-6.5 mm long, obscurely 3-nerved, the upper glumes 7.5-9 mm long, lightly (5) 7-nerved; lemmas more or less fringed with fine hairs on the margins and nerves below, obscurely 7-nerved, strongly tapering and long-pointed, 9-13 mm long, unawned; anthers about 1.5 (2) mm long.
Moist to dry meadows and forests in the lowland and montane zones; common on Vancouver Island, frequent on the Queen Charlotte Islands, rare in S BC; N to SE AK, E to SW AB and S to SD, ID, UT 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)
A shade-tolerant/intolerant, submontane to montane, South American and Western North American grass distributed more in the Pacific than the Cordilleran region. Occurs in cool temperate and cool mesothermal climates on fresh to very moist, nitrogen-rich soils; its occurrence decreases with increasing latitude, elevation, and continentality. Scattered in herbaceous understories on water-receiving sites with melanized, base-rich soils. A nitrophytic species characteristic of Moder and Mull humus forms.