Nassella lepida (Hitchc.) Barkworth

Stipa lepida Hitchc. Am. Jour. Bot. 2: 302. 1915
Culms cespitose, often in large bunches, erect or spreading at base, glabrous or scaberulous, or the lower internodes pubescent, the upper ones sometimes puberulent below the nodes; sheaths glabrous, sometimes a little roughened, slightly villous at the throat; ligule very short, less than 1 mm. long; blades flat or soon involute, rather lax, glabrous or scaberulous beneath, pubescent on upper surface, 10-30 cm. long, 1-2 or even as much as 4 mm. wide; panicle open, nodding, 10-20 cm. long, the branches single, in pairs, or in clusters, ascending or more or less spreading, slender, scabrous, naked below (or with some short branches in the cluster), 5-8 cm. long, or sometimes longer, branching about the middle, bearing several or many pale or sometimes purplish spikelets, the branchlets appressed; glumes 6-8 mm. long, equal or the first a little longer, narrow, acuminate, glabrous, 3-nerved; lemma 4.5-5.5 mm. long, the callus less than 1 mm. long, barbed with white hairs, the body tapering from below the middle to the summit, brown at maturity, sparsely villous all over with white hairs or glabrate toward summit, the neck short and obscure, the summit with several short stiff appressed hairs; awn obscurely twice geniculate, scaberulous, very slender, loosely twisted to the second bend, mostly 2.5-3.5 cm. long; anthers tipped with a minute tuft of hairs.
Type locauty: Santa Barbara County. California (Chase 5611).
Distribution: Dry hills, open woods, and rocky slopes, central California to Lower California.