Brachypodium pinnatum

Heath false brome

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Heath false brome is a naturalized perennial grass found in southern North Coast, San Francisco Bay Area, and potentially other regions in open woodland, forest edges, and grassland at elevations below 30 meters. Flowering in summer, this grass produces pale green to tan spikelets in compact clusters 4 to 25 centimeters long. Growing 30 to 120 centimeters tall with generally erect stems emerging from spreading rhizomes, it forms dense clumps in open habitats. Its leaf blades are flat, 6 to 45 centimeters long and 1.5 to 7 millimeters wide, becoming slightly rolled when dry. Each spikelet contains 7 to 24 florets with lemmas 6 to 11 millimeters long, bearing delicate awns 1 to 7 millimeters in length.

Habitat: Open woodland, forest edges and grassland

Bloom period: Summer

Elevation: < 30 m

Bioregions: s NCo, SnFrB, expected elsewhere

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