General: Perennial grass from well-developed, scaly, creeping rhizomes, often matted; stems solid, decumbent or erect, slightly flattened, minutely more or less knobby-roughened, greater than 1 mm wide, 5-30 cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths smooth; blades flat or in-rolled, straight or curved-spreading, smooth below, more or less stiff-hairy above, 0.4-6.5 cm long, 0.5-4.2 mm wide; ligules membranous, the tips sharp-pointed to squared-off, ragged, 0.8-3 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence a narrow, compact, spikelike, loosely flowered, exserted panicle, 1-15 cm long, 0.1-1.7 cm wide, the branches 0.4-5 cm long, appressed, rarely ascending, spreading up to 20degree from the stem axis; spikelets 1- or 2-flowered, nearly unstalked or short-stalked; glumes green, more or less rough below, 1- (occasionally 2-) nerved, the midnerves very prominent, nearly equal, 0.6-2 mm long, 1/3-1/2 the length of the lemmas, the tips sharp-pointed, sometimes minutely awn-tipped, the awns less 0.2 mm long; lemmas lanceolate, dark greenish or mottled, smooth, about 1.7-2.6 (3.1) mm long, the tips sharp-pointed to long-pointed, minutely rough, sometimes minutely awn-tipped, the awns up to 0.5 mm long, the calluses not bearded; paleas lanceolate, 1-2.4 (2.9) mm long, the tips sharp-pointed; anthers 0.9-1.6 mm long, yellow to purplish.
Moist to dry, often alkaline meadows, talus slopes, and gravel bars along rivers in the steppe and montane zones; infrequent in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, except absent on the Queen Charlotte Islands; N to S YT and S NT, E to PQ and NB and S to ME, MI, WI, MN, NE, NM, AZ and CA.
Ecological Framework for Muhlenbergia richardsonis
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)
