Melica bulbosa

Oniongrass, Oniongrass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Oniongrass is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, Sierra Nevada, Great Basin, and western edge of the Mojave Desert in dry rocky slopes and conifer forest at elevations up to 3,400 meters. Flowering from July to August, this plant produces delicate pale flowers in loose branching clusters with spikelets 6 to 24 millimeters long. Growing with stems 20 to 100 centimeters tall and developing characteristic sessile corms at the base, it spreads via short rhizomes. Its leaf blades are relatively narrow, 1.5 to 5 millimeters wide, with persistent basal leaf sheaths that remain intact. The plant's lemmas are 6 to 12 millimeters long, with tips ranging from obtuse to acute, giving the grass a subtle textural complexity.

Habitat: dry rocky slopes, conifer forest

Bloom period: Jul-Aug

Elevation: < 3400 m

Bioregions: KR, NCoRH, NCoRI, CaRH, SN, GB, w edge DMoj

California counties: Tuolumne, Alpine, Butte, Calaveras, Fresno, Siskiyou, Sacramento, Humboldt, Trinity, Marin, Placer, Sierra, Nevada, Madera, El Dorado, Inyo, Mono, Plumas, Santa Clara, Tulare, Mariposa, Amador, Modoc, Kern, Lassen, Shasta, Glenn, Tehama, Lake, Riverside, San Luis Obispo, Solano, Del Norte, Yolo, Contra Costa

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