Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Perennials.

Stems: Culms densely tufted, 4–9 dm tall, erect, robust, glabrous or pubescent.

Roots: Fibrous root system.

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades coriaceous, 10–25 cm long, 2–4(–6) mm wide, flat, or usually involute toward the apex. Apex stiff, subulate. Surfaces glabrous or pubescent. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheaths 4–12 cm long, usually loosely clasping the culm, especially the lower ones, glabrous to soft pubescent; ligule 3–5 mm long, membranous, usually lacerate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in panicles erect, spikelike, sometimes interrupted or rather loose, 12–20 cm long, ca. 1 cm in diameter. spikelets 2–3–flowered, 4–6 mm long, compressed, scabrous to villous; glumes ca. 5 mm long, apex acuminate, first glume narrow, 0.7–1 mm wide from keel to margin, second glume twice as wide as first glume; lemmas 4–5 mm long, indistinctly 5–nerved, rather firm, somewhat keeled, usually dorsally awned from below the entire or slightly bifid apex, the awn usually bent, 2–5 mm long; palea 4–5 mm long, membranous, apex acuminate. Stamens 3. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Caryopsis reddish brown; cylindrical; 2.5–3 mm long; apex attenuate.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Arid cinder fields; subalpine shrubland and grassland; and in open bogs.

Elevation Range: 750–4,090 m.