Patzkea paniculata

Patzkea paniculata (formerly Festuca paniculata), the panicled fescue, is a robust, densely tufted perennial grass of the Poaceae family native to the mountains of southern and central Europe, from the Iberian peninsula through the Pyrenees, Alps, and Apennines to the Balkans, where it is a characteristic species of subalpine grasslands. The plant forms large, coarse, golden-green tussocks of stiff, inrolled, somewhat glaucous basal leaves up to forty centimetres long, the sheaths reddish-brown at the base. The flowering culms rise sixty to one hundred and twenty centimetres tall and bear in summer broad, open, somewhat lax panicles fifteen to twenty-five centimetres long, with spreading branches carrying numerous lanceolate, five- to seven-flowered, yellowish to pale brown spikelets. The species favours sunny, well-drained, often acidic mountain pastures and stony slopes between roughly 1,200 and 2,400 metres elevation.