Festuca saximontana |
Festuca sect. Festuca |
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fétuque des montagnes rocheuses, fétuque des rocheuses, mountain fescue, Rocky Mountain fescue |
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Habit | Plants usually densely, sometimes loosely, cespitose, without rhizomes. | Plants loosely or densely cespitose, with short rhizomes or without rhizomes. | ||||||||
Culms | (5)8-50(60) cm, usually smooth and glabrous, occasionally sparsely scabrous or puberulent below the inflorescence. |
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Sheaths | closed for about 1/2 their length, glabrous, smooth or scabrous, usually persistent, rarely slowly shredding into fibers; collars glabrous; ligules 0.1-0.5 mm; blades 0.5-1.2 mm in diameter, conduplicate, abaxial surfaces glabrous or sparsely puberulent, adaxial surfaces scabrous or puberulent, veins 5-7(9), ribs 1-5; abaxial sclerenchyma in 3-7 strands, sometimes partly confluent or forming a continuous band, usually more than twice as wide as high; adaxial sclerenchyma absent; flag leaf blades 0.5-4 cm. |
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Blades | more or less stiff, setaceous if lax, usually conduplicate, sometimes convolute or flat; ribs usually distinct; sclerenchyma usually only developed on the adaxial surface, sometimes forming pillars or girders at the major veins. |
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Inflorescences | (2)3-10(13) cm, contracted, with 1-2 branches per node; branches usually erect, spreading at anthesis, lower branches with 2+ spikelets. |
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Spikelets | (3)4.5-8.8(10) mm, with (2)3-5(7) florets. |
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Glumes | exceeded by the upper florets, ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, scabrous distally; lower glumes 1.5-3.5 mm; upper glumes 2.5-4.8 mm; lemmas (3)3.4-4(5.6) mm, mostly smooth, often scabrous distally, awns (0.4) 1-2(2.5) mm; paleas as long as or slightly shorter than the lemmas, intercostal region puberulent distally; anthers (0.8)1.2-1.7(2) mm; ovary apices glabrous. |
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Innovations | mostly intravaginal. |
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Calluses | wider than long, scabrous on the margins; lemmas chartaceous, apices usually entire, rarely minutely bidentate, usually awned, sometimes unawned; ovary apices usually pubescent, sometimes sparsely pubescent, rarely glabrous. |
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2n | = 42. |
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Festuca saximontana |
Festuca sect. Festuca |
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Distribution |
AK; AZ; CA; CO; IA; ID; KS; MI; MN; MT; ND; NE; NM; NV; NY; OR; SD; UT; VT; WA; WI; WY; AB; BC; MB; NL; NT; ON; QC; SK; YT; Greenland
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Discussion | Festuca saximontana grows in grasslands, meadows, open forests, and sand dune complexes of the northern plains and boreal, montane, and subalpine regions in the Flora region, extending from Alaska to Greenland, south to southern California, northern Arizona, and New Mexico in the west and to the Great Lakes region in the east. It is also reported from the Russian Far East. Festuca saximontana provides good forage for livestock and wildlife. It is closely related to F. brachyphylla (see previous), and is sometimes included in that species as F. brachyphylla subsp. saximontana (Rydb.) Hulten. It has also frequently been included in F. ovina (p. 422). The populations which grow in sandy areas around the upper Great Lakes have been named Festuca canadensis E.B. Alexeev; given the great variation in the species, there seems to be little justification for this. Three weakly differentiated taxa have been recognized at the varietal level in North America. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Festuca sect. Festuca is most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere. Its species are native to all continents except Antarctica. There are perhaps 400 or more species in this section, with new ones constantly described. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 24, p. 430. | FNA vol. 24, p. 412. | ||||||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Poeae > Festuca > subg. Festuca > sect. Festuca | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Poeae > Festuca > subg. Festuca | ||||||||
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Subordinate taxa | ||||||||||
Synonyms | F. ovina var. saximontana, F. ovina var. rydbergii | |||||||||
Name authority | Rydb. | unknown | ||||||||
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