Poa palustris
Fowl bluegrass
Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native
Fowl bluegrass is a naturalized perennial grass found in the Klamath Ranges, northern California High Sierra Nevada, San Gabriel Mountains, San Bernardino Mountains, and Great Basin in disturbed ground, moist forests, sagebrush scrub, meadows, and stream edges at elevations of 1,500 to 2,000 meters. Flowering from May to September, this grass produces small green to pale green spikelets in open, lanceolate inflorescences 10 to 30 centimeters long. Growing in dense tufts or with spreading stolons, it forms soft, flat stems 25 to 120 centimeters tall with occasional descending prickles below the nodes. Its leaves have soft, flat blades 1.5 to 6 millimeters wide, with open sheaths and short ligules 1 to 3 millimeters long. The plant produces delicate spikelets with lemmas 2 to 3 millimeters long, featuring hairy marginal veins and long cobwebby flower bases.
Habitat: Disturbed ground in moist forest or sagebrush scrub, meadows, along streams
Bloom period: May-Sep
Elevation: 1500-2000 m
Bioregions: KR, CaRH, n&c SNH, SnGb, SnBr, GB
California counties: San Bernardino, Butte, Modoc, Mono, Plumas, Tulare, Lassen, Sierra, Placer, San Diego, Los Angeles, Amador, El Dorado, Inyo, San Joaquin, Trinity, Ventura, Nevada, Siskiyou, Yuba, Mendocino, Tuolumne, Calaveras, Alpine, Humboldt, Santa Barbara, Lake, Shasta, Alameda, Tehama
Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.