Festuca californica |
Festuca rubra |
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California fescue |
fetuque rouge, ravine fescue, red fescue |
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Habit | Plants densely cespitose, without rhizomes. | Plants usually rhizomatous, usually loosely to densely cespitose, culms sometimes single and widely spaced, sometimes stoloniferous. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Culms | 30-150 (200) cm, glabrous or pubescent, sometimes scabrous. |
(8)10-120 (130) cm, erect or decumbent, glabrous and smooth. |
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Sheaths | closed for less than 1/3 their length, persistent, glabrous or pilose, smooth or scabrous, sometimes scabrous or pilose only distally or on the distal margins; collars usually densely pubescent or with a few hairs at the margins, sometimes glabrous; ligules 0.2-5 mm, usually ciliate, abaxial surfaces puberulent; blades 1-6.5 mm wide, conduplicate, convolute, or flat, 0.5-2(2.5) mm in diameter when convolute, deciduous, abaxial surfaces scabrous or smooth, glabrous or the bases pubescent, adaxial surfaces puberulent to pubescent, veins 9-15(17), ribs (3)5-15(17); abaxial sclerenchyma forming more or less continuous bands, sometimes reduced to small strands; adaxial sclerenchyma sometimes present; girders or pillars present at most veins. |
closed for about 3/4 their length when young, readily splitting with age, usually pubescent, at least distally, hairs retrorse or antrorse, sometimes glabrous, not persistent, older vegetative shoot sheaths shredding into fibers; collars glabrous; ligules 0.1-0.5 mm; blades usually conduplicate or convolute and 0.3-2.5 mm in diameter, sometimes flat and 1.5-7 mm wide, abaxial surfaces glabrous, smooth or scabrous, adaxial surfaces scabrous or pubescent, veins 5-9(13), ribs (3)5-7(9), usually conspicuous; abaxial sclerenchyma in 5-9(13) discrete or partly confluent strands, rarely forming a complete band; adaxial sclerenchyma sometimes present in fascicles opposite the veins; girders and pillars not developed. |
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Inflorescences | 10-25(30) cm, open, with (1)2(4) branches per node; branches spreading and lax. |
(2)3.5-25(30) cm, usually open or loosely contracted panicles, occasionally racemes, with 1-3 branches per node, lower branches with 2+ spikelets; branches erect or spreading, stiff or lax, glabrous, scabrous, or pubescent. |
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Spikelets | 8-18(20) mm, borne towards the ends of the branches, with 3-6(8) florets. |
(6)7-17 mm, with 3-10 florets. |
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Glumes | lanceolate, glabrous or sparsely scabrous at the apices; lower glumes (4)4.5-6.7(8) mm; upper glumes (5)6-10 mm; lemmas (7)7.5-11 mm, lanceolate, scabrous, puberulent, sometimes minutely bidentate, acute, usually awned, rarely unawned, awns (1)2-3(4) mm; paleas shorter than to longer than the lemmas, pubescent or glabrous on the margins, intercostal region usually puberulent distally; anthers (3)4-7.5(8.5) mm; ovary apices densely pubescent. |
ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, exceeded by the distal florets; lower glumes (1.5)2-6(7) mm; upper glumes (3)3.5-8.5 mm; lemmas 4-9.5 mm, usually glabrous and smooth, sometimes scabrous towards the apices, sometimes densely pubescent throughout, attenuate or acuminate in side view, awned, awns (0.1)0.4-4.5 mm; paleas slightly shorter than to about equaling the lemmas, intercostal region puberulent distally; anthers 1.8-4.5 mm; ovary apices glabrous. |
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2n | = 56. |
= 28, 42, 56, 70. |
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Festuca californica |
Festuca rubra |
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Distribution |
CA; OR
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AK; AL; AZ; CA; CO; CT; DC; DE; GA; IA; ID; IL; IN; KY; MA; MD; ME; MI; MN; MO; MT; NC; ND; NE; NH; NJ; NM; NV; NY; OH; OR; PA; RI; SC; TN; TX; UT; VA; VT; WA; WI; WV; WY; HI; AB; BC; MB; NB; NL; NS; NT; NU; ON; PE; QC; SK; YT; Greenland
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Discussion | Festuca californica grows on dry, open slopes and moist streambanks in thickets and open woods, from sea level to 2000 m. Its range extends from Clackamas County, Oregon, to the Sierra Nevada and southern California; it is not known to extend into Mexico. It is the largest species of Festuca in the Flora region. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Festuca rubra is interpreted here as a morphologically diverse polyploid complex that is widely distributed in the arctic and temperate zones of Europe, Asia, and North America. Its treatment is complicated by the fact that Eurasian material has been introduced in other parts of the world. In addition, hundreds of forage and turf cultivars have been developed, many of which have also been widely distributed. Within the complex, morphologically, ecologically, geographically, and/or cytologically distinct taxa have been described, named, and given various taxonomic ranks. In some cases, these taxa represent extremes, and in other cases they are morphologically intermediate between other taxa. Moreover, hybridization and/or introgression between native taxa, and between native and non-native taxa, may be occurring. In Iceland and southern Greenland, putative hybrids between Festuca frederikseniae and F. rubra have been reported, and named F. villosa-vivipara (Rosenv.) E.B. Alexeev (see under F. frederikseniae, p. 436). Overlap in morphological characters between most taxa in the complex has led some taxonomists to ignore the variation within the complex, calling all its members Festuca rubra without qualification. This obscures what is known about the complex, and presents an extremely heterogenous assemblage of plants as a single “species”—or a mega-species. The following account attempts to reflect the genetic diversity of the F. rubra complex in the Flora region. All the taxa are recognized as subspecies, but they are not necessarily equivalent in terms of their distinction and genetic isolation. Much more work on the taxonomy of the F. rubra complex is needed before the boundairs of individual taxa can be firmly established. Some variants that need attention are (1) plants growing on the sandy shores of the Great Lakes that have glaucous leaves and spikelets, sometimes treated as F. rubra var. juncea (Hack.) K. Richt., (2) native plants along the James Bay and Hudson Bay shore that are ecologically distinct from F. rubra subsp. rubra, (3) native plants growing in marshes, sometimes called F. rubra var. megastachys (Gaudin) Hegi (Dore and McNeill 1980), (4) seashore variants along the Atlantic coast of North America, (5) plants with glaucescent leaves and spikelets which are widely distributed in the Flora region and have been called F. rubra subsp. glaucodea Piper, (6) the widespread variant with pubescent to villous lemmas, sometimes called F. rubra f. squarrosa (Hartm.) Holmb. Festuca earlei (p. 420) is sometimes confused with F. rubra. It differs in having pubescent ovary apices. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 24, p. 410. | FNA vol. 24, p. 412. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Poeae > Festuca > subg. Festuca > sect. Breviaristatae | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Poeae > Festuca > subg. Festuca > sect. Festuca | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Name authority | Vasey | L. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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