Bromus orcuttianus

Orcutt's brome

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Orcutt's brome is a California native perennial grass found in northwestern California, Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, southern Coast Ranges, Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Modoc Plateau in dry meadows, scrub, and open forest at elevations of 560 to 3,500 meters. Flowering from June to July, this grass produces open branching inflorescences with spikelets 20 to 40 millimeters long in spreading clusters. Growing 75 to 150 centimeters tall with 2 to 3 stem nodes, it has distinctive long grass blades 7 to 24 centimeters in length with prow-shaped tips. Its stem sheaths are hairy while the blades remain glabrous, with a ligule 1 to 3 millimeters long. The grass produces lemmas with awns 5 to 7 millimeters long, adding texture to its delicate flowering structure.

Habitat: dry places, meadows, scrub, open forest

Bloom period: Jun-Jul

Elevation: 560-3500 m

Bioregions: NW, CaR, SN, SCoRO, TR, PR, MP

California counties: Butte, El Dorado, Fresno, Humboldt, Nevada, Plumas, San Luis Obispo, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, Tulare, Tuolumne, Amador, Mariposa, San Diego, Trinity, Madera, Placer, San Bernardino, Yuba, Mendocino, Los Angeles, Lake, Glenn, Calaveras, Kern, Lassen, Ventura, Alpine, Modoc, Sierra, Colusa, Del Norte, Mono, Santa Barbara, Sonoma, Riverside, Monterey, Alameda

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