Aristida oligantha

Oldfield three-awn

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Native

Oldfield three-awn is a California native annual grass found in northwestern California, the northern Sierra Nevada foothills, Central Valley, southern coastal ranges, and mountains of the Peninsular Ranges at elevations below 1,000 meters in disturbed places, dry slopes, grasslands, shrublands, and woodlands. Flowering from July to November, this plant produces pale tan to light brown spikelets with divergent, spreading seed heads 5 to 20 centimeters long. Growing with highly branched stems 30 to 60 centimeters tall, it develops intricate, open raceme-like clusters. Its narrow leaves are very slender, 3 to 15 centimeters long and typically less than 2 millimeters wide, often tightly inrolled. The distinctive seed heads feature delicate awns 10 to 70 millimeters long, spreading outward in an elegant, wispy arrangement.

Habitat: Disturbed places, dry slopes, fields, grassland, shrubland, woodland

Bloom period: Jul-Nov

Elevation: < 1000 m

Bioregions: NW, CaRF, SNF, GV, SCoRO, MP

California counties: Amador, Butte, El Dorado, Humboldt, Merced, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tuolumne, Yuba, Modoc, Monterey, Riverside, Solano, Stanislaus, Tehama, Sonoma, Placer, Del Norte, Calaveras, Nevada, Sutter, Mendocino, Madera, Lake, Fresno, San Joaquin, Imperial

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