Gastridium phleoides

Nit grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Nit grass is a naturalized annual grass found in California Floristic Province and North Coast and Coast Ranges in open, generally dry, disturbed sites at elevations below 1,450 meters. Flowering from April to November, this grass produces translucent, pale green to white spikelets with delicate, thin inflorescences. Growing 20 to 70 centimeters tall with generally glabrous stems, it forms upright clumps in disturbed areas. Its leaves are narrow, 4 to 9 centimeters long and 3 to 5 millimeters wide, with ligules 1 to 7 millimeters in length. The distinctive spikelets feature lemmas with straight to curved awns 3 to 6 millimeters long, arising from beneath a truncate, toothed tip.

Habitat: Open, generally dry, disturbed sites

Bloom period: Apr-Nov

Elevation: generally < 1450 m

Bioregions: CA-FP, MP

California counties: Mendocino, San Luis Obispo, San Diego, Lake, Santa Barbara, Solano, Riverside, Shasta, Humboldt, Butte, Santa Cruz, Orange, Ventura, Los Angeles, Monterey, Madera, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Calaveras, Sutter, San Francisco, Sonoma, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, San Joaquin, Tehama, Tuolumne, Yuba, Tulare, Sacramento, Amador, Alameda, Mariposa, Nevada, Placer, Siskiyou, Napa, San Bernardino, Stanislaus, Colusa, Glenn, Trinity, Del Norte, Yolo, Merced, San Benito

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