Poa compressa

Canadian blue grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Canadian blue grass is a naturalized perennial grass found in California in moist, often disturbed low ground at elevations below 2,000 meters. Flowering from April to August, this grass produces small, compact flower clusters in dense lanceolate panicles. Growing with distinctively flattened and keeled stems 15 to 60 centimeters tall, it spreads through long, stout rhizomes with nodes that are noticeably exposed and lower nodes that are abruptly bent. Its leaf blades are 1.5 to 4 millimeters wide, soft to somewhat firm, and can be flat or folded, with open sheaths and rounded ligules. The grass has delicate spikelets with lemmas 2.3 to 3.5 millimeters long, featuring hairy marginal veins and keels.

Habitat: Moist, often disturbed low ground

Bloom period: Apr-Aug

Elevation: < 2000 m

Bioregions: CA

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