Eragrostis minor

Little love grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Little love grass is a naturalized annual grass found in northern Coast Ranges, northern Sierra Nevada foothills, Central Valley, southern California coastal areas, Modoc Plateau, and eastern Mojave Desert in disturbed soils at elevations below 1,400 meters. Flowering from June to September, this grass produces small gray-green spikelets in delicate, open branching clusters 3.5 to 15 centimeters long. Growing with erect to prostrate stems up to 60 centimeters tall that branch at the base and have distinctly glandular nodes, it develops flexible grass blades 2 to 10 centimeters long and 1 to 4 millimeters wide. Its leaf sheaths are notably soft-hairy near the collar, with blades that are flat or slightly rolled and sometimes featuring tiny wart-like glands along the margins. The tiny, compact spikelets contain 8 to 12 florets and produce minute round to elliptic fruits approximately 0.5 millimeters long.

Habitat: Disturbed soils

Bloom period: Jun-Sep

Elevation: < 1400 m

Bioregions: NCoRO, n&ampc SNF, GV, SCo, MP, DMoj

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