Blue wild rye

Elymus glaucus, blue wild rye, is a cool-season perennial bunchgrass in the family Poaceae native to western and northern North America from Alaska south to northern Mexico and east to New York. It forms small to medium tufts of erect, smooth culms 0.5-1.5 m tall, with flat, often glaucous bluish-green leaf blades up to about a centimetre wide and short, membranous ligules. The inflorescence is a slender, erect, narrow spike many centimetres long composed of several to many paired, awned spikelets sitting flat against the rachis; each spikelet is 1-1.5 cm long with awns of similar length, giving the spike a bristly profile. The species occurs in a wide range of habitats from coastal prairie, oak woodland and open forest to montane meadows and disturbed roadsides, and is an important component of native bunchgrass communities and a larval host for the woodland skipper.