Festuca subuliflora

Crinkle-awn fescue, Crinkle-Awn Fescue

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Crinkle-awn fescue is a California native perennial found in northern coastal, Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, northern Sierra Nevada, and San Francisco Bay Area regions in redwood and oak/pine forest near streams at elevations generally below 700 meters. Flowering from May to August, this plant produces pale green to yellow flowers in an open panicle 10 to 20 centimeters long with drooping branches. Growing in loose clumps with leafy stems 60 to 100 centimeters tall, its stems have visible nodes and are well-structured. Its soft leaf blades are 15 to 30 centimeters long, 2.5 to 8 millimeters wide, and slightly flat with sparse hairs, while its distinctive lemmas feature crinkled awns 10 to 15 millimeters long. The spikelets are 8 to 12.5 millimeters long, with florets that have hairy bases and slightly forked tips.

Habitat: Near streams, redwood, oak/pine forest

Bloom period: May-Aug

Elevation: generally < 700 m

Bioregions: NCo, KR, NCoRO, n SNH, SnFrB

California counties: Butte, Humboldt, Del Norte, Plumas, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, Mendocino, Siskiyou, Nevada, Yuba, Calaveras, Trinity

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