Melica aristata

Awned melic

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Awned melic is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, and San Bernardino Mountains in dry open sites and conifer forests at elevations of 1,000 to 3,000 meters. Flowering from June to August, this grass produces delicate spikelets with translucent margins, typically 11 to 21 millimeters long. Growing with sturdy stems 40 to 120 centimeters tall, it forms distinctive clumps with narrow leaf blades 2 to 6 millimeters wide. Its lemmas feature characteristic awns 5 to 12 millimeters long, with marginal veins that may be hairy or glabrous. The plant's inflorescence spreads 7 to 26 centimeters, with branches bearing 1 to 4 spikelets arranged in a delicate, appressed pattern.

Habitat: dry open sites, conifer forest

Bloom period: Jun-Aug

Elevation: 1000-3000 m

Bioregions: KR, NCoR, CaR, SNH, SnBr

California counties: Humboldt, El Dorado, Siskiyou, Mariposa, Tuolumne, Butte, Tulare, Plumas, San Bernardino, Nevada, Shasta, Tehama, Calaveras, Placer, Alpine, Amador, Glenn, Madera, Monterey, Sonoma, Trinity, Yuba, Fresno, Kern, Mendocino, Sierra, Lake, San Diego, Del Norte, Stanislaus, Mono

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