Phalaris angusta

Timothy canary grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Native

Timothy canary grass is a native annual grass found in northern coastal, southern Sierra Nevada, Great Valley, San Francisco Bay, southern coastal, Peninsular, and Mojave Desert regions in wet areas, marshes, sloughs, and chaparral edges at elevations below 1,400 meters. Flowering from May to June, this plant produces pale flowers in dense, narrow cylindric clusters 2 to 20 centimeters long, with spikelets often tinged purple. Growing 1 to 1.7 meters tall with upright stems, it forms distinctive clusters with feathery sterile lemmas. Its leaves are narrow and typical of grass species, with spikelets featuring winged keels and prominent midveins. The small fruit is less than 1.5 millimeters long, with lanceolate lemmas sparsely covered in fine hairs.

Habitat: Generally wet areas, marshes, sloughs, edge of chaparral

Bloom period: May-Jun

Elevation: < 1400 m

Bioregions: NCoRO, NCoRI, s SNH, GV, SnFrB, SCoRO, SCo, PR, DMoj

California counties: Solano, Napa, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Riverside, San Diego, Sonoma, Monterey, Modoc, Humboldt, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Marin, Tulare, Fresno, Lake, Siskiyou, Mariposa, Alameda, San Francisco, San Joaquin

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