Festuca guestfalica

Festuca guestfalica, commonly known as hard fescue or Westphalian fescue, is a densely tufted perennial grass in the family Poaceae native to Europe. It is closely related to Festuca ovina and is sometimes treated as a subspecies within the F. ovina aggregate. The plant forms compact tussocks 20 to 60 cm tall with very narrow, almost needle-like, inrolled or folded blue-green to grey-green leaves that arise mostly from the base. The inflorescence is a narrow, contracted panicle bearing small spikelets of three to seven florets, the lemmas tipped with a short awn. Hard fescue tolerates poor, dry, sandy or stony soils and low fertility, and is shade-tolerant compared with many other turf grasses. It is widely cultivated and used in turfgrass mixes for low-maintenance lawns, road verges and erosion control, and is also grown as a meadow component on infertile soils across temperate Europe and North America.