General: Perennial, tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems 10-40 (50) cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open; blades flat to somewhat in-rolled, 1.5-3.5 mm wide; ligules entire, rounded, about 1 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence an ultimately open panicle, 5-15 cm long, the branches rough, spreading to reflexed, the lower branches of fruiting inflorescences usually descending, occasionally spreading; spikelets (3-) 5- to 6-flowered, the spikelet stalks usually uniformly rough; glumes egg-shaped, usually minutely more or less fringed with fine hairs, the lower ones barely 1 mm long, the upper ones (1.5) 2 mm long; lemmas broadly egg-shaped, the margins entire below, roughly sharp-toothed near the tips, often more or less fringed with fine hairs, sparsely hairy near the base, (1.4) 1.6-1.8 (2) mm long, broadly rounded to blunt and jagged at the tips; paleas usually equalling or slightly exceeding the lemmas; lodicules barely 0.5 mm long; anthers 0.5-0.8 mm long.
Notes: Generally recognized as introduced but some populations with branches of the fruiting inflorescence nondescending, including some in BC, are possibly intergradational with P. nuttalliana, and may be native.
Saline or alkaline flats, lakeshores, coastal strands and disturbed sites in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; frequent throughout BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, rare westward in BC; introduced from 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)
