Poa wheeleri

Wheeler's Bluegrass

Back yard view of Poa wheeleri or Wheeler's Bluegrass.	One bunch showing open panicles that are often pyramidal.	Note the openness and the rather sparce spikelets.
The usual green variety.	The red variety.	Lower florets are open. Distal ends of lemmas are translucent.
The glumes are shorter than the adjacent lemmas. Seed shown beneath.	The silvery stigmas above the immature seed or caryopsis.	The roots show a short white rhizome.

How to Identify Wheeler's Bluegrass

  The 15 species of Arizona genus Poa, or Bluegrass, are difficult. Use your hand lens to see the spidery cobwebs below the lemmas. Five species, including Wheeler's Bluegrass, have none of these cobwebs. Only two of the cobweb-free five have rhizomes, and of these two, only Wheeler's has an open panicle.

Similar Species

  The Arizona fescues (Festuca species) look a lot like Bluegrasses (Poa species), each with their small abundant spikelets topping their thin stems and with skinny leaves at base. But all the fescues have awns, usually short, and none of the Bluegrasses do. So check this first.
  To identify the Poa species, you must open a few spikelets to see if there are cobwebby bases. If there are none, only Poa fendleriana and Poa wheeleri have rhizomes in the roots, so you must dig these up. Finally, Poa fendleriana has a bunched, rather spike-like, glob of spikelets at the top, while Poa wheeleri is quite open. All this for a species that grows only in Coconino County!