Festuca subulata
Bearded fescue
Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native
Bearded fescue is a California native perennial grass found in northwestern California, the Cascade Range, and northern and central Sierra Nevada in open places, moist banks, and forests at elevations generally below 2,500 meters. Flowering from June to August, this grass produces delicate drooping flower branches in open inflorescences 10 to 40 centimeters long. Growing in loosely clumped formations with stems 35 to 120 centimeters tall and visible nodes, it spreads through short rhizomes. Its flat leaf blades are 10 to 30 centimeters long and 3 to 10 millimeters wide, with surfaces that are glabrous or minutely scabrous. Each spikelet features distinctive lemmas with awns 5 to 20 millimeters long, giving the grass its characteristic "bearded" appearance.
Habitat: Open places, moist banks, forest
Bloom period: Jun-Aug
Elevation: generally < 2500 m
Bioregions: NW, CaR, n&c SN
California counties: Plumas, Humboldt, Madera, Siskiyou, Mariposa, Butte, Trinity, Del Norte, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Nevada, Yuba, San Bernardino, Placer, Tuolumne, Santa Cruz, Inyo, Sierra, Tehama
Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.