Sporobolus niliacus

Modest prickle grass, Modest Prickle Grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Modest prickle grass is a naturalized annual grass found in northern California regions including the Coast Ranges, Cascade Range, northern Sierra Nevada foothills, Central Valley, southern Coast Ranges, southwestern California, and Mojave Province in wet soils, lake margins, and vernal pools at elevations below 1,280 meters. Flowering from June to September, this grass produces small greenish spikelets in compact ovoid clusters 3 to 15 millimeters long. Growing as a low, prostrate plant generally forming mat-like patches, it spreads with multiple branches less than 30 centimeters long. Its leaves are rigid and short, measuring 1 to 5 centimeters long, with distinctive hairy sheath margins that break easily. The plant features nearly equal glumes and lemmas, with tiny anthers measuring 0.5 to 0.9 millimeters long.

Habitat: Wet soils, lake margins, vernal pools

Bloom period: Jun-Sep

Elevation: < 1280 m

Bioregions: NCoR, CaR, n SNF, GV, SCoR, SW (exc n ChI, SnBr), MP

California counties: Butte, Colusa, Contra Costa, Lake, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, Solano, Stanislaus, Fresno, Lassen, Siskiyou, Ventura, Modoc, Sutter, Sacramento, Mendocino, Marin, El Dorado, Kern, Plumas, Sonoma, Tehama, Alameda, Glenn, Yuba, Humboldt, Shasta, San Benito, Napa, San Mateo, Monterey, Amador, Yolo, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara

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