Phalaris coerulescens

Sunol grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Sunol grass is a naturalized perennial herb found in southern Coast Ranges, Santa Catalina Island, and southern desert regions in cultivated fields and moist meadows at elevations below 300 meters. Flowering from April to May, this grass produces pale blue-green flower clusters in dense cylindric inflorescences 4 to 15 centimeters long. Growing in tufted clumps with stems 70 to 200 centimeters tall that are distinctively swollen at the base, it forms dense, clustered vegetation. Its spikelets have glumes 5 to 9 millimeters long with slightly toothed wings and occasionally hairy tips, with fertile lemmas 2.5 to 5 millimeters in length. The fruit is small, approximately 2.5 to 3 millimeters long with a width of about 1.5 millimeters.

Habitat: Cultivated fields, moist meadows

Bloom period: Apr-May

Elevation: < 300 m

Bioregions: SCoRO, s ChI (Santa Catalina Island), DSon

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