Poa annua

Annual blue grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Annual blue grass is a naturalized annual grass found especially near the California coast in disturbed moist ground at elevations generally below 2,000 meters. Flowering from February to September, this grass produces pale green to yellow-green spikelets in open, triangular inflorescences up to 10 centimeters long. Growing in dense tufts or with spreading stolons, it reaches heights of 2 to 20 centimeters with soft, flat leaf blades 1 to 3 millimeters wide. Its leaves have open sheaths and short ligules 1 to 5 millimeters long, with bright to yellow-green coloration. The small spikelets feature lemmas 2.5 to 4 millimeters long with soft hairy veins, typical of this widespread introduced grass.

Habitat: Abundant. Disturbed moist ground

Bloom period: Feb-Sep

Elevation: generally < 2000 m

Bioregions: CA (esp near coast)

California counties: Los Angeles, Sierra, San Luis Obispo, San Bernardino, Riverside, Colusa, Calaveras, Santa Cruz, Fresno, Kern, Alameda, Lake, San Joaquin, Yolo, Santa Barbara, Siskiyou, San Diego, San Francisco, Mendocino, Tulare, Orange, Monterey, Santa Clara, Butte, Stanislaus, Inyo, Humboldt, Marin, Plumas, San Mateo, Shasta, Sonoma, Tuolumne, Ventura, Sutter, Imperial, Merced, El Dorado, Kings, Sacramento, Placer, Nevada, Amador, Glenn, Mariposa, Contra Costa, Madera, Mono, Napa, San Benito, Trinity, Yuba, Del Norte, Tehama, Solano, Modoc

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