Bromus madritensis

Foxtail chess, madrid brome

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Foxtail chess is a naturalized annual grass found in disturbed areas and roadsides throughout California at elevations below 2,200 meters. Flowering from April to June, this plant produces pale green to tan spikelets 27 to 50 millimeters long with slender awns. Growing 10 to 75 centimeters tall with ascending to spreading branches, it forms dense, somewhat obovoid clusters of grass stems. Its leaves are glabrous or slightly hairy, with narrow blades 1 to 6 millimeters wide and ligules 1.5 to 4 millimeters long. The spikelets have distinctive lemmas with straight awns 12 to 30 millimeters long, giving the plant its characteristic "foxtail" appearance.

Habitat: Disturbed areas, roadsides

Bloom period: Apr-Jun

Elevation: < 2200 m

California counties: San Diego, Riverside, Butte, Kern, Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, Orange, San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Contra Costa, San Luis Obispo, Tulare, Sonoma, El Dorado, Yuba, Santa Clara, Yolo, Sutter, Solano, Mendocino, Mariposa, Calaveras, Alameda, Fresno, Nevada, Tuolumne, Placer, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Tehama, Lake, Sacramento, Napa, Shasta, Siskiyou, Humboldt, Amador, Madera, Colusa, Merced

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