Stipa occidentalis var. pubescens

Common western needle grass

Family: Poaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Common western needle grass is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, and San Bernardino Mountains in sagebrush scrub and conifer forest at elevations of 1,200 to 3,500 meters. Flowering from May to August, this grass produces green-tinted spikelets with delicate, hair-like awns up to 50 millimeters long. Growing with slender stems 30 to 120 centimeters tall and 0.8 to 1.3 millimeters in diameter, it has distinctively short-hairy proximal internodes. Its leaf blades are narrow, measuring 1 to 3 millimeters wide, with proximal sheaths generally covered in soft hairs. The grass's most distinctive feature is its awn, which has densely hairy proximal segments and a scabrous to glabrous distal segment.

Habitat: Sagebrush scrub, conifer forest

Bloom period: May-Aug

Elevation: 1200-3500 m

Bioregions: KR, CaR, SN, SnBr

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