Deschampsia bolanderi

Scribner's grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Native

Scribner's grass is a California native annual found in the California Floristic Province and North Coast Ranges in dry, disturbed areas at elevations of 500 to 2,500 meters. Flowering from March to June, this delicate grass produces small purple-tinged spikelets with translucent, scabrous flowers. Growing 5 to 30 centimeters tall with ascending to erect stems, it features distinctive purple nodes and branching habit. Its leaf blades have scabrous margins with a prominent midrib, and translucent ligules 2 to 4 millimeters long. The plant produces small cleistogamous spikelets within leaf sheaths, with lemmas featuring a notched tip and a 2 to 4 millimeter straight awn.

Habitat: Dry, disturbed areas

Bloom period: Mar-Jun

Elevation: 500-2500 m

Bioregions: CA-FP, MP

California counties: El Dorado, Sacramento, Yuba, Lake, Solano, Tehama, Marin, Sierra, Tulare, Tuolumne, Mariposa, San Luis Obispo, Butte, Siskiyou, Monterey, Nevada, Sonoma, Fresno, Shasta, Napa, San Joaquin, San Diego, Lassen, Santa Barbara, Mendocino, Riverside, Stanislaus, Trinity, San Bernardino, Sutter, Placer, Modoc, Calaveras, Kern, Contra Costa, Amador, Madera, San Benito, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Colusa, Humboldt, Merced

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