Anthoxanthum occidentale

California sweet grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

California sweet grass is a native perennial grass found in coastal and central California bioregions including Northern Coast, Central Coast, San Francisco Bay, and southern coastal ranges in moist to dry conifer forest at elevations below 750 meters. Flowering from January to July, this grass produces pale yellow to light green spikelets in open, delicate clusters 7 to 13 centimeters long with lower branches often drooping. Growing with robust, tufted stems 60 to 100 centimeters tall, it forms dense clumps or spreads through elongated underground rhizomes. Its leaves are characteristically stiff and upright, 7 to 30 centimeters long and 5 to 15 millimeters wide, with leaf sheaths that are minutely rough to the touch. The grass has distinctive spikelets 5 to 6 millimeters long, with lemmas featuring clear, soft hairs at the base of lower florets.

Habitat: Moist to dry, conifer forest

Bloom period: Jan-Jul

Elevation: < 750 m

Bioregions: NCo, NCoRO, CCo, SnFrB, SCoRO

California counties: Humboldt, Marin, Santa Clara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Del Norte, Mendocino, Monterey, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, Shasta, Ventura

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