General: Perennial, tufted grass from fibrous roots, green or glaucous; stems mostly erect or ascending, 5-80 cm tall, 0 to 5 nodes exserted, uppermost node usually in the middle to upper 1/3 of stem.
Leaves: Sheath margins open 4/5-9/10 their length; sterile shoots all or most flowering within a season, next year's shoots set late in the growing season, all or most breaking through sheath bases with indistinct two-keeled buds protecting the scales; basal leaves bladeless; blades 0.8-3 mm wide, mostly flat, appressed or abruptly ascending to spreading, strict or somewhat lax; ligules 0.2-3 mm long, the tips blunt to rounded, minutely rough, the backs distinctly rough.
Flowers: Inflorescence an erect or lax panicle, 4-20 cm long, narrowly lanceolate to egg-shaped, sparsely to moderately congested, the branches 2 to 5 per node, ascending to widely spreading, slender, moderately to distinctly rough on angles, the stalks shortly exserted; spikelets laterally compressed, 3-8 mm long, (1) 2- to 5-flowered; glumes awl-like to lanceolate, the lower ones 3-nerved; rachilla internodes mostly less than 1 mm long, smooth or rough, hairless or minutely soft-hairy; lemmas narrowly lanceolate to lanceolate, 2.4-4 mm long, the tips usually bronze-coloured in part, sharp-pointed, the keels and marginal nerves short silky-hairy, hairless or infrequently sparsely and minutely soft-hairy between the nerves; calluses sparsely and often short-cobwebby (rarely hairless); palea keels rough; flowers bisexual (some appearing female-like due to aborted anthers); anthers (0.8) 1.2-2.5 mm long.
Notes: Two subspecies occur in BC:
1. Uppermost culm nodes located on the upper 2/3 of the culms, 2-4 nodes exposed at maturity; ligules less than 0.8 (1) mm long; culms not rough below the panicles; lowest glumes awl-like to narrowly lanceolate, nearly equaling the lowest lemmas in length.................... ssp. nemoralis
1. Uppermost culm nodes located on the lower 1/2 of the culms (sometimes higher), 0-2 (3) nodes exposed at maturity; ligules more than (0.8) 1 mm long; culms sometimes rough below the panicles; lowest glumes narrowly to broadly lanceolate, 3/4 or less the length of the lowest lemmas.................... ssp. interior (Rydb.) W. A. Weber
Dry to mesic meadows, rocky slopes and open forests in the montane zone (ssp. interior); moist forests and disturbed sites in the lowland zone (ssp. nemoralis); frequent E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains (ssp. interior), infrequent in SW BC (ssp. nemoralis); N to AK, YT and NT, E to PQ and S to VT, IL, MO, TX, NM, ID and WA (ssp. interior), introduced from Eurasia (ssp. nemoralis).
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)
