Poa nemoralis

Wood blue grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Wood blue grass is a naturalized perennial grass found in northwestern California and the Sierra Nevada on disturbed ground, cool temperate forest slopes and openings, and mossy rocks near streams at elevations generally below 2,000 meters. Flowering from May to June, this grass produces delicate pale green to greenish-white flower clusters in open, lanceolate panicles 5 to 15 centimeters long. Growing with loosely tufted stems 30 to 70 centimeters tall, it has smooth stems that are glabrous below the nodes. Its leaf blades are soft, generally flat, and 1.5 to 4 millimeters wide, with open sheaths and tiny truncate ligules less than 0.5 millimeters long. The spikelets have lower glumes with three veins and lemmas 3 to 3.5 millimeters long with hairy marginal veins.

Habitat: Disturbed ground, cool temperate forest slopes and openings, mossy rocks near streams

Bloom period: May-Jun

Elevation: generally < 2000 m

Bioregions: NW, SN

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