Could you please identify this grass for me. I think it is just ready to bloom? Probably about 2 weeks later this year than usually. It is about 90 cm tall here. Its whole length is on the first 3 pictures. The last picture is of a spikelet (I believe, but I am getting slightly lost re. what is what), sorry I broke one of the flowers (?) when trying to spread it a little for a better view.
Probably some Festuca. Cannot tell more specifically. BC has several species that are not in our local list.
Thanks Andrey again. So it is native to BC? Could you tell me, is the grass in its blooming stage or just getting ready to bloom?
Not necessarily native. But in order to resolve it to species, the key should consider all possible variants. "Flora of North America" key would help. It is not blooming yet. When it does you should see small hanging stamens and tiny feathers of pistils, like in this photo:
Could you please translate this to ordinary English Andrey? I am not a botanist and am completely at a loss what does it mean. How long it usually takes for grass from the time it starts blooming to the time seeds are ripe?
In traditional plant identification, the key is a questionary where at each step you decide between two alternatives (dichotomical key). The number of questions and their types depend on the set of species to resolve. So, if for different regions the set of species are different, their region-specific keys may also differ in some questions. Flora of North America describes species throughout USA and Canada and should have the most complete questionary.
Thank you both. I looked at the description of Festuca rubra in the the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festuca_rubra. It says that "It can grow between 2 and 20 cm tall". "My" grass leaf is about 45 cm long and the flower stalk is about 90 cm tall. What to make out of this?
Probably something wrong with the Wikipedia entry. "Intermountain Flora" cites that Festuca rubra is about 3-9 dm tall. Check also for ligules (small papery outgrows at the base of the leaves). For F. rubra, they usually shorter than 0.5 mm and ciliate (with small hairs) at the top:
When looking for ligules I suddenly realized that the grass has two kind of leaves, those growing from the base of the plant, long and thin (1st picture and continued on the 2nd picture), and those growing along the flower stalk, short and much wider (at the bottom of the 2nd picture). What to make out of this? Sorry to torture you with all my questions, Andrey!
That's ok, I am torturing myself with grasses. The problem with them is that many key features overlap which always leaves me in stupor. With your plant, two types of leaves are described for the two phases of some Festuca. Narrow, folded - for the vegetative shoots and wide, flat - for the flowering stems.
Thanks. As for the ligules at the base of the short leaves it seems to me there are none. Is it possible or I was simply unable to recognize one?
For F. rubra, the ligules are from 0.1 to 0.5 mm. For such a small size, you need 10X to see them. One key feature that distinguish F. rubra from other two that may fit your photos, F. saximontana and F. idahoensis, is that in most cases the former makes rhizomes, underground stems. You can see them if you find some small sprout near the clump of the older plant and gently pool it out. Most probably, it grows from a rhizome. That is how the lawn grass propagate without given a chance to re-seed. The latter two species do not have rhizomes. To distinguish between them, you need to measure anthers of the stamens (2-4.5 mm in F. idahoensis and 0.3-1.8 mm in F. saximontana).
Yes, it makes rhizomes, I should mention this at the very beginning. I wonder to what degree all those rhizomatous grasses used in lawns contribute to the disappearance of native non-rhizomatous grass species. Of course non-rhizomatous grasses can't survive in the mowed lawn. In addition lawn grasses very often escape from mowed to unmowed areas and spread quickly there. Are they capable of taking over, like some of the most invasive weeds? Thank you Andrey again for a great lesson and thank you Harri for the right identification. Hope you don't mind if I ask for identification of another grass soon.
