Digitaria sanguinalis

Hairy crab grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Hairy crab grass is a naturalized annual grass found in California's lowland and coastal regions in disturbed areas at elevations below 1,250 meters. Flowering from June to September, this grass produces purple-tinged spikelets with delicate white to green flowers. Growing with decumbent stems 20 to 70 centimeters long that often root at lower nodes and have a purplish cast, it spreads readily in disturbed landscapes. Its leaf blades are 3 to 10 centimeters long, covered with swollen-based hairs on both surfaces, and typically 3 to 8 millimeters wide. The plant forms branching, digitate flower clusters with spikelets generally occurring two per node.

Habitat: Disturbed areas

Bloom period: Jun-Sep

Elevation: < 1250 m

Bioregions: CA (exc SNH, GB)

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

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