Scientific Name

Vulpia octoflora (Walter) Rydb. (Synonyms: Festuca octoflora)

Common Name(s)

Sixweeks fescue, sixweeks grass, common sixweeks grass

Tribe / Family Name

Poeae

Flowering Period

April to June

Symbol

VUOC

Description

Sixweeks fescue is a native cool-season cleistogamous annual bunchgrass that has a shallow fibrous root system; regeneration occurs only from seeds. Culms range from 5–60 cm in height. Its inflorescence is a narrow, erect panicle (occasionally racemose above and appearing 1-sided) and usually 1–7 cm long with appressed or spreading branches. Spikelets are usually 4–10 mm long, glabrous, scabrous, or pubescent, laterally compressed, and densely 6- to 12- (sometimes 15-) flowered. Glumes are subulate-lanceolate, and unequal (lower glumes 1.7–4.5 mm long, 1- to 3-nerved; upper glumes 2.5–7.2 mm long, 3-nerved). Lemmas are 2.7–6.5 mm long, lanceolate, smooth, scabrous or pubescent, rounded on the back, obscurely 5-nerved, and awned (awns sometimes up to 5 mm long). Sheaths are open and glabrous or pubescent. Auricles are absent. Ligules are 0.3-1 mm long, membranous, truncate or usually longer on the sides, erose-ciliolate, and glabrous. Blades are up to 10 cm long, up to 1 mm wide, involute, narrow, and glabrous or pubescent.

General Info

Sixweeks fescue can be found in disturbed areas, old fields, roadsides, ditches, grasslands, plains, mesas, foothills, sagebrush deserts, pinyon-juniper woodlands, and montane sites.

Similar Species

Sixweeks fescue may look similar to other fescue (Vulpia, Festuca, and Schedonorus) plants due to their common spikelet features (for example, lemmas are awn-tipped and closely or loosely separated from each other in a herringbone pattern). However, upon close inspection, the extremely unequal glumes of annual fescue (Vulpia myuros) can be differentiated from the unequal glumes of sixweeks fescue and brome fescue (Vulpia bromoides). Also, some fescue species may look like certain brome (Bromus) plants.