General: Perennial, tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems hollow, often equalled or exceeded by the erect, stiff blades of the offsets at the stem bases, 20-50 cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open; blades of the stems usually greatly reduced or lacking, erect, flat or slightly in-rolled, strongly rough, tapering strongly at each end, 3-7 mm wide; ligules more or less fringed with fine hairs, blunt, usually higher on the sides than at the back, about 0.5 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence often a nearly simple raceme with all the flowers and branches more or less to one side, 4-8 cm long; glumes broad, about 7 mm long, nearly equal, 7-nerved, the margins more or less jagged, abruptly narrowed to sharp-pointed tips; lemmas appressed-hairy, about equalling the glumes, stoutly awned from the tips, the awns 5-10 mm long, once bent, strongly crisp-hairy on the upper parts of the calluses; paleas about equal to the lemmas; lodicules 2, lanceolate, faintly 2-nerved, about 5 mm long; anthers about 3.5 mm long, the tips tufted with stiff hairs.
Mesic to dry, gravelly or rocky open forests and forest openings in the montane zone; frequent in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; N to NW NT, E to NF and S to ME, MA, VA, WV, IN, IA, SD, NM, UT, ID and WA.
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)