Bromus berteroanus

Chilean chess

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Chilean chess is a naturalized annual grass found in the northern Coast Ranges, California Ranges, Sierra Nevada, San Joaquin Valley, central and western California, southwestern California, southeastern Sierra Nevada, and desert regions in open, sandy or gravelly soils at elevations below 1,700 meters. Flowering from March to June, this grass produces pale green to tan spikelets 15 to 20 millimeters long with delicate, bent awns. Growing with tufted stems 30 to 60 centimeters tall, it spreads in loosely ascending clumps. Its leaves are sparsely to densely hairy, with blades 2 to 9 millimeters wide and short ligules 1 to 3 millimeters long. The spikelets feature 3 to 9 florets with lemmas having small teeth and distinctive twisted awns 14 to 22 millimeters long.

Habitat: Open, sandy or gravelly soils

Bloom period: Mar-Jun

Elevation: < 1700 m

Bioregions: NCoRI, CaRF, SN, SnJV, CW, SW, SNE, D

California counties: San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Alameda, Calaveras, Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Los Angeles, Monterey, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Siskiyou, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Orange, Trinity, Tulare, Marin, Madera, San Benito, Yolo, Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Kings, Merced, Solano, Mono

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