Calamagrostis lapponica

Calamagrostis lapponica, the Lapland reed-grass, is a perennial cool-season grass in the Poaceae family with a circumboreal distribution across the colder regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The plant spreads by short underground rhizomes and forms loose tufts of slender, erect culms reaching up to 60 centimetres tall. Its narrow leaf blades are flat to slightly inrolled, and the inflorescence is a contracted panicle up to 15 centimetres long, often suffused with purple tones. Each spikelet bears a single floret with a bent dorsal awn and is surrounded at the base by long, silky hairs characteristic of the genus. The species occurs across Scandinavia, Russia, Greenland, Alaska and almost every Canadian province and territory, where it grows on dry to moist tundra, peatlands, open coniferous woodland, gravelly slopes and disturbed northern soils, typically on acidic substrates.