Festuca californica
Encyclopedia
Festuca californica is a species of grass
Poaceae
The Poaceae is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of flowering plants. Members of this family are commonly called grasses, although the term "grass" is also applied to plants that are not in the Poaceae lineage, including the rushes and sedges...

 known by the common name California fescue. It is native to the United Mexican States where it is a member of many plant communities, including chaparral
Chaparral
Chaparral is a shrubland or heathland plant community found primarily in the U.S. state of California and in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula, Mexico...

. This fescue
Fescue
Festuce is a genus of about 300 species of perennial tufted grasses, belonging to the grass family Poaceae . The genus has a cosmopolitan distribution, although the majority of the species are found in cool temperate areas...

 is a clumping bunch grass perennial without rhizome
Rhizome
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes...

s.

It reaches anywhere from 40 to 120 centimeters in height. The rough leaves are narrow but can be quite long. The inflorescence
Inflorescence
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Strictly, it is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed and which is accordingly modified...

 holds spikelets which are each one to two centimeters long. The plant reproduces from seed and from buds located at the base of the clump. This is a California native grass
California native plants
California native plants are plants that existed in California prior to the arrival of European explorers and colonists in the late 18th century...

 which is used for revegetating grassland that has been cleared or claimed by non-native
Introduced species
An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...

grasses.

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