Agrostis exarata

Spike bent grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Spike bent grass is a California native perennial found in the California Floristic Province, Great Basin, and Panamint Mountains in moist or disturbed areas, open woodland, and conifer forest at elevations below 2,000 meters. Flowering from June to August, this grass produces delicate, pale greenish-white spikelets in open to dense inflorescences 5 to 30 centimeters long. Growing with slender stems 8 to 100 centimeters tall, it forms loose, spreading tufts with ascending branches. Its flat leaves are 4 to 15 centimeters long and 2 to 7 millimeters wide, with ligules 2.5 to 4 millimeters long. The spikelets feature small awned lemmas with delicate straight to slightly bent awns less than 3.5 millimeters long.

Habitat: Common. Moist or disturbed areas, open woodland, conifer forest

Bloom period: Jun-Aug

Elevation: < 2000 m

Bioregions: CA-FP, GB, DMtns (Panamint Range)

California counties: Humboldt, Contra Costa, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Lake, Lassen, Madera, Marin, Mariposa, Mendocino, Mono, Monterey, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Riverside, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tuolumne, Ventura, Yuba, Modoc, Orange, San Francisco, Tehama, Tulare, Napa, Glenn, Calaveras, Alameda, Sutter, Stanislaus, Sierra, San Benito, Trinity, Sacramento, Solano, Kings, San Joaquin, Merced, Yolo

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