Luzula parviflora
(synonym of Luzula divaricata)
small-flowered woodrush
stem leaves bright yellow-green; shiny, never glaucous; leaf tips acuminate, or blunt and swollen.
uneven panicles or cymes of more than 10 flowers; secondary and tertiary branches common, variously arched, stiffly spreading; and/or nodding within a population;
flowers solitary, occasionally paired at ends of panicle branches.
tepals variable, often pale to medium brown, 1.8– 2.5 mm;
filaments 0.5–0.6 mm;
anthers 0.3–0.5 mm;
styles 0.1–0.5 mm.
1.8–2.4 mm;
apex acute to acuminate.
including tail 1.1–1.5 × 0.6–0.85 mm, lacking aril, occasionally with a short dry tail 0.05–0.2 mm.
=22, 24.
Luzula parviflora
Forest, rocky slopes, meadows, shores, springs. 0–2800m. BR, BW, Casc, CR, ECas, Est, Sisk, WV. CA, NV, ID, WA; across North America; Eurasia. Native.
Within this species, the proximal end of the seed bears short hairs. Eastern North American populations, with dark tepals and blue-green leaves, have been called var. melanocarpa, but the trend is inconsistent. Plants with primary inflorescence branches stiffly divaricate have been misidentified as the Sierra Nevada endemic L. divaricata or called L. parviflora ssp. fastigiata. They are merely one extreme of a long continuum of variation in branching patterns in trans-Pacific plants. A species with both acuminate and blunt swollen leaf tips is unusual for Luzula, but leaf tip shape in L. parviflora does not appear to be correlated with branching patterns and needs study.
Peter Zika
CA
OR
Flora NW
PNW Herbaria
WildflowerSearch
iNaturalist
USDA Plants Database
