Elymus triticoides

Beardless wild-rye

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Beardless wild-rye is a California native perennial grass found in dry to moist, often saline meadows throughout California at elevations up to 2,500 meters. Flowering from June to July, this grass produces pale green to greenish-white flower spikes 5 to 20 centimeters long with spikelets clustered at each node. Growing with robust rhizomatous stems 45 to 125 centimeters tall, it spreads quickly in grassland environments. Its leaf blades are narrow, 10 to 35 centimeters long and 3 to 6 millimeters wide, with a finely rough upper surface that gives the plant a distinctive texture. The plant's delicate spikelets feature awl-like glumes 5 to 16 millimeters long, with each spikelet containing 3 to 7 florets.

Habitat: dry to moist, often saline, meadows

Bloom period: Jun-Jul

Elevation: < 2500 m

Bioregions: CA

California counties: Kern, San Francisco, San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Riverside, Monterey, Del Norte, Inyo, Ventura, Orange, Santa Cruz, Alpine, San Luis Obispo, Mono, Santa Barbara, Tuolumne, Butte, Sutter, Fresno, Shasta, Glenn, Trinity, El Dorado, Modoc, Lassen, Plumas, Contra Costa, Humboldt, Lake, Siskiyou, Yolo, Sonoma, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Marin, Sierra, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Merced

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