Elymus lanceolatus subsp. lanceolatus

Thick-spike wheat grass, Thick-Spike Wheat Grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Thick-spike wheat grass is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, Cascade Range, northern and southern Sierra Nevada, southwestern California, and Modoc Plateau in open sites, woodlands, and conifer forests at elevations of 500 to 2,250 meters. Flowering from June to September, this grass produces pale green to greenish-white spikelets in dense, slightly nodding seed heads 10 to 22 centimeters long. Growing with robust stems 20 to 130 centimeters tall emerging from well-developed underground rhizomes, it forms dense clumps with upright to arching foliage. Its leaf blades are narrow, 1 to 6 millimeters wide, typically rolled or slightly flat, with short ligules less than half a millimeter long. The plant produces spikelets 10 to 28 millimeters long, with stiff, slightly hairy lemmas that may have short awns up to 2 millimeters in length.

Habitat: Open sites, woodland, conifer forest

Bloom period: Jun-Sep

Elevation: 500-2250 m

Bioregions: KR, NCoRI, CaR, n SN, s SNH, SW, MP

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