Saccharum ravennae

Ravenna grass, Ravenna Grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Conservation status: Cal-IPC Yes

Ravenna grass is a naturalized perennial grass found in the northern California Coast Ranges, Central Valley, and southern desert regions of Imperial County in low-elevation ditch banks and marshes below 300 meters. Flowering from July to September, this grass produces feathery plume-like inflorescences 2.5 to 6 decimeters long with spikelets densely covered in silky hairs. Growing in dense tufts 2 to 4 meters tall with strongly serrated leaves, the grass forms impressive clumps with blade-like foliage. Its leaves are narrow, typically 5 to 10 decimeters long and less than 12 millimeters wide, with dense hairs near the base and a tiny ligule less than 1 millimeter long. The grass produces delicate spikelets 3.5 to 7 millimeters long with lance-shaped glumes and awned lemmas 3 to 5 millimeters in length.

Habitat: Ditch banks, marshes

Bloom period: Jul-Sep

Elevation: < 300 m

Bioregions: NCoRI, GV, DSon (Imperial Co.)

California counties: Imperial, Fresno, Yolo, Colusa, Sutter, Napa, Lake, Sacramento

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