Poa trivialis

Rough blue grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Rough blue grass is a naturalized perennial grass found in northern coastal California regions in disturbed moist places at elevations below 700 meters. Flowering from April to July, this grass produces pale green to green-white flowers in open, lanceolate to ovate inflorescences 8 to 25 centimeters long. Growing with dense basal tufts 30 to 100 centimeters tall, it develops short stolons and forms cespitose clumps. Its leaf blades are soft, flat, and 1 to 5 millimeters wide, with open sheaths that are slightly rough to the touch and ligules 3 to 7 millimeters long. The plant's spikelets have distinctive sickle-shaped lower glumes and lemmas with hairy keels and marginal veins.

Habitat: Disturbed moist places

Bloom period: Apr-Jul

Elevation: < 700 m.

Bioregions: NCo, NCoRO, probably elsewhere

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