Festuca microstachys

Festuca microstachys, the small fescue or Pacific fescue, is a small annual grass in the Poaceae family native to western North America, particularly the Pacific states of California, Oregon and Washington, with extensions into Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Baja California and northern Mexico. It grows on open grasslands, oak woodlands, serpentine slopes, vernally moist meadows, disturbed roadsides and burned ground from sea level to about 2000 metres elevation. The species is treated by some authors as Vulpia microstachys and includes several recognised varieties. The plant produces slender, weakly tufted culms 10 to 60 centimetres tall, glabrous and erect to slightly geniculate, with one to three culms per individual. The leaf blades are very narrow, 1 to 2 millimetres wide, inrolled to flat, and 2 to 10 centimetres long; the sheaths are open and the ligules short and membranous. The inflorescence is an open to loosely contracted, slender panicle 4 to 15 centimetres long with appressed to spreading branches bearing spikelets along most of their length. Each spikelet is laterally compressed, 5 to 10 millimetres long excluding the awns, and contains three to seven florets; the lemmas are 4 to 7 millimetres long and tipped by a slender straight awn 3 to 12 millimetres long. The fruit is a narrow caryopsis.