Muhlenbergia filiformis

Pull-up muhly

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Native

Pull-up muhly is a California native annual grass found in northwestern California, Sierra Nevada, western Transverse Ranges, San Bernardino Mountains, San Jacinto Mountains, and Great Basin in moist meadows, seeps, and streambanks at elevations of 150 to 3,350 meters. Flowering from June to August, this delicate grass produces purple to yellow anthers with small, narrow inflorescences less than one centimeter wide. Growing with loosely clumped, decumbent stems 20 to 30 centimeters tall that root at lower nodes, it spreads across moist ground in loose clusters. Its thin leaves are 1 to 4 centimeters long and 1 to 2 millimeters wide, either flat or slightly rolled, with serrate ligules measuring 1 to 2.5 millimeters. The plant's compact, cylindrical flower clusters feature short lemmas with tiny awns less than one millimeter long.

Habitat: Moist meadows, seeps, streambanks

Bloom period: Jun-Aug

Elevation: 150-3350 m

Bioregions: NW, SN, WTR, SnBr, SnJt, GB

California counties: Fresno, El Dorado, Mono, Alpine, Calaveras, Placer, Plumas, Siskiyou, Butte, San Bernardino, Inyo, Tulare, Nevada, Shasta, Tehama, Amador, Tuolumne, Mariposa, Riverside, Humboldt, Lassen, Trinity, Madera, San Diego, Modoc, Del Norte, Glenn, Ventura, Yuba, Kern, Sierra, Colusa, Lake, Mendocino

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