Festuca bromoides

Brome fescue

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Brome fescue is a naturalized annual grass found in the California Floristic Province and Mojave Desert in dry, disturbed places, coastal-sage scrub, and chaparral at elevations generally below 1,500 meters. Flowering from April to June, this grass produces green to brown spikelets 5 to 10 millimeters long with delicate awns. Growing with slender stems up to 50 centimeters tall, which are either glabrous or slightly hairy, it forms dense clusters of grass blades. Its leaves are narrow and linear, typical of grass species, with spikelets containing 4 to 7 individual florets. Each spikelet features distinctive lemmas with awns ranging from 2.5 to 12 millimeters long, giving the plant a feathery, delicate appearance.

Habitat: Dry, disturbed places, coastal-sage scrub, chaparral

Bloom period: Apr-Jun

Elevation: generally < 1500 m

Bioregions: CA-FP, DMoj

California counties: Humboldt, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Tulare, Los Angeles, Inyo, Calaveras, Placer, Butte, Mendocino, Contra Costa, Fresno, Sonoma, San Mateo, Colusa, Tehama, Marin, Alameda, San Diego, Siskiyou, Shasta, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Imperial, San Francisco, Tuolumne, Santa Clara, San Benito, Solano, Yolo, Lake, Kern, Madera

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