Melica spectabilis

Purple oniongrass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Conservation status: CNPS 4.3

Purple oniongrass is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern North Coast Ranges, northern Sierra Nevada, and Warner Mountains in wet sites, meadows, and conifer forest at elevations of 1,200 to 2,600 meters. Flowering from May to July, this plant produces distinctive purple-tinted spikelets 7 to 19 millimeters long with delicate, appressed branches. Growing with stems 35 to 100 centimeters tall and short-stalked corms scattered throughout, it forms compact clusters with short rhizomes. Its leaf blades are narrow, 2 to 5 millimeters wide, with extremely short ligules less than 3 millimeters long. The plant features 3 to 7 bisexual florets with lemmas that are generally widest above the middle and have acute to obtuse tips.

Habitat: Wet sites, meadows, conifer forest

Bloom period: May-Jul

Elevation: 1200-2600 m

Bioregions: KR, n NCoR, n SNH, Wrn

California counties: El Dorado, Trinity, Siskiyou, Mendocino, Humboldt, Nevada, Glenn, Modoc, Mono, Napa

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