Deschampsia flexuosa
Deschampsia alpina
Appalachian hairgrass, common hairgrass, crinkled hairgrass, deschampsie flexueuse, wavy hair-grass
alpine hairgrass, deschampsie alpine, hairgrass
30-80 cm, erect or geniculate at the base, usually with 2 nodes.
8-45(65) cm, smooth, glabrous.
mostly basal, sometimes forming a basal tuft;
sheaths smooth, glabrous;
ligules 1.5-3.6 mm, rounded to acute;
blades 12-25 cm long, strongly rolled, 0.3-0.5 mm in diameter, abaxial surfaces smooth or scabridulous, glabrous or hairy, often scabridulous or hairy proximally and essentially smooth and glabrous distally, adaxial surfaces scabrous, flag leaf blades 5-8 cm.
forming a basal tuft;
sheaths smooth, glabrous;
ligules 1.5-7.5 mm, glabrous, acute to acuminate, entire;
blades 2-8 cm long, 0.5-2 mm wide, usually folded or flat, sometimes some loosely involute, both surfaces glabrous, smooth.
5-15 cm long, (2)4-12 cm wide, narrow to open, often nodding;
branches ascending to spreading, flexuous, smooth or scabridulous.
(4)8-16 cm;
branches 2-8 cm long (excluding the blades of bulbous florets), straight, ascending, smooth.
4-7 mm, ovate or U-shaped.
usually viviparous, their length varying with age, rarely bisexual and 4-6.3 mm.
exceeded by or subequal to the adjacent florets, 1-veined, acute;
lower glumes 2.7-4.5 mm;
upper glumes 3.5-5 mm;
callus hairs to 1 mm;
lemmas 3.3-5 mm, scabridulous or puberulent, hairs to 0.1 mm, apices acute, erose to 4-toothed, awns 3.7-7 mm, attached near the base of the lemma, strongly geniculate, geniculation below the lemma apices, distal segment 2.5-4.5 mm, pale;
anthers 2-3 mm.
subequal, exceeding the lowest floret in sexual spikelets, keels smooth, apices acuminate;
callus hairs about 0.8 mm;
lemmas 5-7 mm, smooth, shiny, glabrous, unawned or awned, awns to 4 mm, straight, attached from below midlength to near the apices;
paleas vestigial or absent.
= 14, 26, 28, 32, 42.
= 52, 56.
Deschampsia flexuosa
Deschampsia alpina
Deschampsia flexuosa grows on dry, often rocky slopes, and in woods and thickets, often in disturbed sites. In the Flora region, it is primarily eastern in distribution, with records from west of the Great Lakes and Appalachians probably being introductions. It is also known from Mexico, Central America, South America, Borneo, the Philippines, and New Zealand.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Deschampsia alpina grows in damp, rocky places, on calcareous substrates with low organic content, in Greenland and northeastern Canada and, outside the Flora region, in the mountains of Scandinavia and Russia in the Kola Peninsula and Novaya Zemlya. Plants of D. alpina differ from viviparous plants of D. cespitosa in having smooth, rather than scabrous, panicle branches (Murray, pers com. 2005).
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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