Beckmannia syzigachne

American slough grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Native

American slough grass is a native annual found in northwestern California, the Cascade Range, northern Sierra Nevada, Sacramento Valley, northern Coast Ranges, San Francisco Bay Area, Modoc Plateau, and northern eastern Sierra Nevada in margins of ponds, streams, and marshes at elevations below 2,000 meters. Flowering from May to July, this plant produces pale green to light brown flowers in narrow, dense inflorescences about 7 to 30 centimeters long. Growing with tufted stems 20 to 120 centimeters tall, it forms compact clusters in wet habitats. Its leaf blades are flat, 6 to 21 centimeters long and 4 to 10 millimeters wide, with a pubescent ligule 4 to 11 millimeters long and slightly rough texture. The plant produces small spikelets 2 to 3 millimeters long with prominently keeled glumes and lance-shaped lemmas without awns.

Habitat: Margins of ponds, streams, marshes

Bloom period: May-Jul

Elevation: < 2000 m

Bioregions: NW, CaR, n SN, ScV, n CCo, SnFrB, MP, n SNE

California counties: Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Marin, Mendocino, Modoc, Mono, Plumas, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Trinity, El Dorado, Ventura, San Mateo, Nevada, Napa, Sierra, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz

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