Calamagrostis rubescens

Pine reed grass, Pine Reed Grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Pine reed grass is a California native perennial found in northern coastal, north coastal redwood, central western, and northern Channel Islands (Santa Cruz Island) regions in wooded slopes, montane forest, chaparral, and meadows at elevations below 900 meters. Flowering from June to September, this grass produces delicate pale green to tan flower clusters in dense to slightly open inflorescences 6 to 15 centimeters long. Growing with loosely clustered stems 60 to 100 centimeters tall, it develops slender rhizomes 10 to 20 centimeters long and has 2 to 3 stem nodes. Its leaf blades are 2 to 5 millimeters wide, flat, with smooth lower surfaces and scabrous upper surfaces that are occasionally short-hairy. The grass produces awned lemmas 3 to 4 millimeters long with twisted awns 2 to 4 millimeters in length, often barely extending beyond the glume tips.

Habitat: Wooded slopes, montane forest, chaparral, meadows

Bloom period: Jun-Sep

Elevation: < 900 m

Bioregions: NCo, NCoRO, CW, n ChI (Santa Cruz Island)

California counties: Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Napa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Plumas, Lake, Humboldt, Del Norte, Siskiyou, El Dorado, Placer

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