Puccinellia distans

European alkali grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

European alkali grass is a naturalized perennial found in California Floristic Province and Great Basin bioregions in saline meadows and flats at elevations below 2,700 meters. Flowering from June to July, this grass produces small, pale flowers in loose spreading clusters typically 2.5 to 20 centimeters long. Growing with slender stems 10 to 40 centimeters tall, it forms delicate clumps in salt-tolerant habitats. Its leaf blades are narrow, measuring 1 to 7 millimeters wide when flat, and can be either spread out or slightly rolled. The grass has distinctive lemmas with widely obtuse tips and scabrous-serrate margins near the flower ends.

Habitat: Saline meadows, flats

Bloom period: Jun-Jul

Elevation: < 2700 m

Bioregions: CA-FP, GB

California counties: Placer, Alameda, Inyo, Lassen, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Los Angeles, Nevada, Plumas, Tulare, Modoc, Mendocino, Mono, Tuolumne, Sierra, Alpine, Monterey

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