General: Perennial, densely tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems 10-40 cm tall.
Leaves: Mostly basal, not glaucous; sheath margins open about 3/4 their length, basal sheaths persistent, densely overlapping; sterile shoots emerging strictly inside sheaths with distinct two-keeled buds protecting the scales; blades 2-4.5 mm wide, flat, thick, short, basal ones widely spreading, persisting through the season, upper stem ones much reduced in length; ligules rounded at tips, those of the sterile shoot leaves 1-2 (3) mm long, those of upper stem leaves up to 4 (5) mm long, backs smooth, hairless.
Flowers: Inflorescence an erect panicle, 2-6 (8) cm long, egg-shaped to pyramidal, congested, contracted at maturity, terminal internodes 0.6-1 (1.5) cm long, the branches 1 to 2 per node, ascending to spreading, round, smooth or very slightly rough (rarely distinctly rough all around), the stalks widely spreading from the tips; spikelets laterally compressed, broadly lanceolate to egg-shaped, 3.9-6.2 mm long, 3- to 7-flowered; glumes broadly lanceolate, the lower 3-nerved; rachilla internodes less than 1 mm long, smooth, hairless; lemmas broadly lanceolate, 3-5 mm long, the tips sharp-pointed, keels and marginal nerves silky-hairy, sparsely to moderately short silky-hairy between the nerves; calluses hairless; paleas mostly minutely soft- to silky-hairy, the keels rough near the tips; flowers bisexual; anthers 1.3-2.3 mm long.
Moist to wet meadows, gravel bars, avalanche tracks and talus slopes in the montane to alpine zones; common throughout BC; circumboreal, N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and NS, and S to MI, OR, CO, UT and NM; Greenland, Eurasia.
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)
