Festuca brachyphylla

Festuca brachyphylla, the alpine fescue or shortleaf fescue, is a small tufted perennial grass in the family Poaceae. Plants are bright green, densely or loosely cespitose, and erect, growing without rhizomes from a fibrous root system. The leaf blades are slender, long, soft, and folded or involute, 2 to 6 centimeters long and only 0.5 to 1 millimeter wide, with closed leaf sheaths at the base. The inflorescence is a contracted cylindrical or ovoid panicle 1 to 3 centimeters long bearing relatively few purplish or bronze-tinged spikelets. Each spikelet contains two to four florets and bears short awns 1 to 3 millimeters long. Flowering occurs from late June into July. The species is circumpolar and broadly alpine in distribution, ranging across the Arctic and through the high mountains of North America and Eurasia; in North America it extends across Canada and southwards along the Rocky Mountains to New Mexico and California. It occupies a range of habitats from rocky places at high altitudes between 2,800 and 4,300 meters to wet alpine meadows, streamsides, river bars, and dry gravelly slopes.