''Poa cusickii'' is a species of
grass known by the common name Cusick's bluegrass. It is native to western North America from
Yukon to
Colorado to eastern
California, where it grows in many types of habitat, including high mountain meadows and slopes,
sagebrush scrub, and forests.
Description
It is a perennial
bunchgrass growing dense, sometimes large, clumps up to about 60 centimeters in maximum height. The narrow leaves are firm and sometimes rolled along the edges. The longest leaves are located around the middle of the stem. The
inflorescence is a dense, narrow series of overlapping branches bearing up to 100 spikelets in total.
The grass is
dioecious
Dioecy (; ; adj. dioecious , ) is a characteristic of a species, meaning that it has distinct individual organisms (unisexual) that produce male or female gametes, either directly (in animals) or indirectly (in seed plants). Dioecious reproductio ...
, with male and female individuals producing different types of flowers in their inflorescences. The plant often reproduces
vegetatively via
tillers, or via
apomixis
In botany, apomixis is asexual reproduction without fertilization. Its etymology is Greek for "away from" + "mixing". This definition notably does not mention meiosis. Thus "normal asexual reproduction" of plants, such as propagation from cuttin ...
with unfertilized seeds, and some populations are made up only of female individuals. One subspecies, ssp. ''purpurascens'', is all female.
US Forest Service Fire Ecology
/ref>
References
External links
USDA Plants Profile for ''Poa cusickii'' (Cusick's bluegrass)Grass Manual Treatment of ''Poa cusickii'' (Cusick's bluegrass)Jepson Manual eFlora (TJM2) treatment of ''Poa cusickii''
Jepson eFlora (TJM2): ''Poa cusickii'' subsp. ''cusickii''
Jepson eFlora (TJM2): ''Poa cusickii'' subsp. ''epilis''
Jepson eFlora (TJM2): ''Poa cusickii'' subsp. ''pallida''
Jepson eFlora (TJM2): ''Poa cusickii'' subsp. ''purpurascens''
cusickii
Bunchgrasses of North America
Grasses of Canada
Grasses of the United States
Native grasses of California
Flora of Western Canada
Flora of the Western United States
Flora of the Great Basin
Flora of the Sierra Nevada (United States)
Dioecious plants
Flora without expected TNC conservation status
{{Pooideae-stub