General: Perennial, tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems (30) 40-80 (100) cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open; blades becoming in-rolled, 1-2.5 (3) mm wide; ligules rounded to pointed, usually sparsely short-hairy and rough externally, 1-3 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence a narrow panicle, 6-20 cm long, the branches rough, ultimately spreading (ascending), the lower branches of fruiting inflorescences ascending to spreading, sometimes reflexed; spikelets (3-) 4- to 7-flowered, the stalks usually uniformly rough; glumes sparsely more or less fringed with fine hairs toward the tips, the lower ones about 1.3-2 mm long, the upper ones mostly 1.5-2.5 mm long; rachilla joints slightly over 1 mm long; lemmas sparsely short-hairy near the base, (2) 2.5-3.2 mm long, abruptly narrowed to rounded tips that are slightly more or less fringed with fine hairs, the margins entire below, roughly sharp-toothed near the tips, paleas nearly equal to the lemmas; lodicules about 0.5 mm long; anthers 0.7-1 (1.2) mm long.
Notes: Many variants have been recognized in this complex on the basis of anther length, inflorescence branching pattern and other characters, but additional research is required before recognition of additional species is justified. The variant forms appear to be merely weakly differentiated races connected to one another through intermediate forms.
Moist to wet (sometimes ephemeral), usually saline or alkaline meadows, ditches and shorelines in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; frequent in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, rare in coastal BC; N to AK, YT and NT, E to PQ and NB and S to ME, VT, WI, MN, NE, TX, NM, AZ and CA.
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)
