Poa abbreviata |
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abbreviated bluegrass, dwarf blue grass, northern blue grass, short bluegrass |
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Habit | Plants perennial; not or scarcely glaucous; densely tufted, not stoloniferous, not rhizomatous. | ||||||||
Culms | 5-15(20) cm, slender, leafless above the basal tuft. |
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Sheaths | closed for 1/10 – 1/4 their length, terete; ligules 0.4-5.5 mm, milky white to hyaline, smooth or scabrous, apices truncate to acute; blades 0.8-1.5(2) mm wide, involute, moderately thick, soft, apices narrowly prow-shaped. |
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Basal branching | all or mainly intravaginal. |
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Panicles | 1.5-5 cm, erect, lanceoloid to ovoid, contracted, congested; nodes with 1-3 branches; branches to 1.5 cm, erect, slender, terete, sulcate or angled, smooth or the angles sparsely scabrous; pedicels usually shorter than the spikelets. |
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Spikelets | 4-6.5 mm, laterally compressed, rarely bulbiferous, frequently strongly anthocyanic; florets 2-5, rarely bulb-forming; rachilla internodes usually shorter than 1 mm, smooth or scabrous. |
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Glumes | subequal to slightly longer than the adjacent lemmas, lanceolate to broadly lanceolate, distinctly keeled, keels smooth; lower glumes (1)3-veined, lateral veins often faint and short; upper glumes exceeding or exceeded by the upper florets; calluses glabrous or webbed; lemmas 3-4.6 mm, lanceolate to broadly lanceolate, distinctly keeled, thin, keels and marginal veins usually short- to long-villous, hairs extending along 3/4 - 5/6 of the keel, infrequently glabrous, intercostal regions glabrous or softly puberulent to short-villous, apices acute; palea keels scabrous, often short-villous to softly puberulent at midlength, sometimes glabrous; anthers 0.2-1.2(1.8) mm. |
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2n | = 42. |
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Poa abbreviata |
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Distribution |
AK; CA; CO; ID; MT; NV; OR; UT; WY; AB; BC; NT; NU; YT; Greenland |
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Discussion | Poa abbreviata is an alpine and circumarctic species which has two subspecies in the western Cordilleras, and one in the high arctic. It grows mainly on frost scars and mesic rocky slopes, usually on open ground. In rare cases where the lemmas and calluses of P. abbreviata ate glabrous, it can be confused with P. lettermanii (p. 580), but that species has shorter spikelets and glumes that are longer than the adjacent florets. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 24. | ||||||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Poeae > Poa > subg. Poa > sect. Abbreviatae | ||||||||
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Name authority | R. Br. | ||||||||
Web links |