Agrostis blasdalei

Blasdale's bent grass, Blasdale's bent grass, Blasdale's bent grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Conservation status: CNPS 1B.2

Blasdale's bent grass is a rare (CNPS 1B.2) California native perennial found in southern Northern Coast, northern Central Coast, and northern San Francisco Bay bioregions in coastal dunes, gravelly soils, and coastal scrub at elevations below 100 meters. Flowering from May to July, this grass produces delicate, pale green to white spikelets in dense, cylindric inflorescences 2 to 8 centimeters long. Growing with decumbent to erect stems 6 to 30 centimeters tall, it forms compact tufts with slender, slightly inrolled leaves. Its narrow leaves are typically 2 to 5 centimeters long and less than 1 millimeter wide, with short ligules 1 to 1.5 millimeters long. The small spikelets feature glumes 1.8 to 4 millimeters long and lemmas occasionally bearing a short, straight awn less than 0.7 millimeters in length.

Habitat: Dunes, gravelly soils, coastal bluffs, scrub

Bloom period: May-Jul

Elevation: < 100 m

Bioregions: s NCo, n CCo, n SnFrB.

California counties: Marin, Mendocino, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, San Mateo, Monterey

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.