False-brome - Brachypodium sylvaticum

Description

A tufted grass to 60 cm with hairy stems and flat broad (to 12 mm wide), yellow-green leaves, which are drooping and softly hairy. Inflorescences 6 to 15 cm long, spike-like, loose and often drooping at the tip with 4 to 12 spikelets. Lemmas linear-lanceolate, hairy 7 to 11 mm long with rough awns to 12 mm.

Identification difficulty
ID guidance

Sheaths and leaves have long hairs. The inflorescence is a spike with almost stalkless (sessile), rounded (not flattened) spikelets alternating up the rachis but slightly angled away from it.

Habitat

Open woods and scrub.

When to see it

June to July.

Life History

Perennial.

UK Status

Common over most of Britain except the north of Scotland.

VC55 Status

Common in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 405 of the 617 tetrads.

Leicestershire & Rutland Map

MAP KEY:

Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2020+ | 2015-2019 | pre-2015

UK Map

Species profile

Common names
False-brome, Wood False-Brome
Species group:
Grasses, Rushes & Sedges
Kingdom:
Plantae
Order:
Poales
Family:
Poaceae
Records on NatureSpot:
51
First record:
11/05/1992 (John Mousley;Steve Grover)
Last record:
02/08/2023 (Smith, Peter)

Total records by month

% of records within its species group

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