Chewing fescue

Festuca nigrescens, the chewing fescue or rough-stalked fescue (now often treated as a subspecies of Festuca rubra as F. rubra subsp. commutata), is a densely tufted perennial cool-season grass in the family Poaceae native to Europe and temperate Asia, and widely used in turf and amenity-grass seed mixtures throughout the temperate world. Unlike the strongly rhizomatous Festuca rubra subsp. rubra, F. nigrescens forms a compact bunch with only very short rhizomes, giving rise to a tight, dense, persistent turf prized for its fine texture, shade tolerance, and modest growth rate. Plants are 20-70 cm tall in flower, with very narrow, deep green, almost filiform leaves 1 mm wide or less that are tightly folded and sharply keeled, the abaxial side often glabrous and slightly glossy. The basal leaf sheaths are reddish-brown and fibrous when old. The flowering culm is slender, erect, and bears a contracted, slightly nodding panicle 5-15 cm long with appressed branches. Spikelets are oblong, 6-10 mm long, with 4-7 florets, the lemmas tipped with a short awn 1-3 mm long. The species occurs in upland pastures, mountain grassland, and as a cultivated turfgrass.