Publication: Contr. U.S. Natl. Herb. 1(8): 271. 1893.

Origin: Native

Herbarium search: CPNWH

Notes: FNA24: "Poa cusickii grows in rich meadows in sagebrush scrub to rocky alpine slopes, from the southwestern Yukon Territory to Manitoba and North Dakota, south to central California and eastern Colorado. It is gynodioecious or dioecious.

Poa cusickii subsp. cusickii grows mainly in mesic desert upland and mountain meadows, on and around the Columbia plateaus of northern California, Oregon, southern Washington, and adjacent Idaho and Nevada. It is highly variable, with fairly open- to contracted-panicle populations, and from gynodioecious to dioecious populations. The modal and mean longest branch lengths of the narrower-panicled populations of subsp. cusickii serve to distinguish it from subsp. pallida in most cases. It appears to have hybridized with P. pringlei around Mount Shasta, California, and Mount Rose, Nevada. Poa stebbinsii, an endemic in the high Sierra Nevada, is easily distin-guished from P. cusickii subsp. cusickii by its long hyaline ligules."

Last updated 12/15/2023 by David Giblin.