Common Name: pine dropseed

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Graminoid

General: Densely perennial bunchgrass with stems 10-70 cm, erect, glabrous or smooth below the nodes, sheaths open, longer than internodes.

Vegetative: Blades flat to involute, scabrous, 1-15 cm long, 0.6-2.5 mm wide, ligules 0.5-2 mm, hyaline to membranous, entire.

Inflorescence: Terminal panicles 3-25 cm long, 1-10 cm wide, with ascending branches, pedicels 2-9 mm, straight or flexuous, minutely glandular just below the spikelets, spikelets with 1 floret, slightly laterally compressed, grayish-green, disarticulation above the glumes; glumes 1.5-2.5 mm, often appearing 3-veined with infolding of the margins; lemmas 2-3.5 mm, densely sericeous.

Ecology: Found on dry sites, in rocky to sandy soils from 2,500-12,000 ft (762-3658 m); flowers June-November.

Notes: Distinctive with its delicate, wispy panicle and grayish spikelets. This nomenclature follows Peterson et al. 2010, which recognizes an expanded Muhlenbergia to make the genera monophyletic.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Muhlenbergia is named for Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Muhlenberg (1753-1815) a clergyman and botanist from Pennsylvania; tricholepis comes from tri for three and lepis for scale.

Synonyms: Blepharoneuron tricholepis, Vilfa tricholepis

Editor: SBuckley, 2010

Plants perennial; densely cespitose. Culms 10-70 cm, erect, glabrous and smooth or scabrous just below the nodes. Ligules (0.3)0.7-2(2.7) mm, hyaline to membranous, entire; blades 1-15 cm long, 0.6-2.5 mm wide, scabrous. Panicles 3-25 cm long, 1-10 cm wide; branches ascending; pedicels 2-9 mm, straight or flexuous. Glumes (1.5)1.8-2.6(3) mm, often appearing 3-veined because of the characteristic infolding of the margins; lemmas (2)2.3-3.5(3.9) mm; anthers 1.2-2.1 mm, brownish. Caryopses 1.2-1.4 mm. 2n = 16.

Blepharoneuron tricholepis grows in dry, rocky to sandy slopes, dry meadows, and open woods in pine-oak-madrone forests from Utah and Colorado to the state of Puebla, Mexico, at elevations of 700-3660 m. It flowers from mid-June through November.