Single Record
Participant Info
- Species
- Poa pratensis [Paneion pratense] [Poa angustifolia subsp. pratensis] [Poa agassizensis]
- Family
- Poaceae
- CommonName
- Kentucky bluegrass, bluegrass, sweet meadow-grass, smooth meadow-grass
- Presence
- yes
- Status
- native, exotic
- EarliestDate
- 1896
- LatestDate
- 2025
- Ecosystem
- basin, shrubland, foothill, montane, subalpine, tundra, ruderal, urban
- Geobotanical
- SSawatch, Garitas, SSanjuans, Culebras, NCristos, UBasin, LBasin
- Counties
- Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, Hinsdale, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache, Archuleta
- Passes
- Cumbres, Elwood, Wolf Creek
- WildlifePreserves
- Baca
- Other Localities
- Del Norte
- Comments
- In the northern hemisphere, Kentucky bluegrass circles the globe. In the Watershed, Poa pratensis, perennial and cool-season, may be both native and introduced. It is by far the most vouchered grass, found from upland pastures (including in the tundra) to street sides, where it has escaped from seeded lawns. In the USA, P. pratensis is present in every state, least common in the Gulf states. It follows the Rio Grande drainage through New Mexico to the Big Bend country of Texas. Note that P. pratensis has strong rhizomes whereas P. palustris, its common sympatric, does not. For a turf grass often kept at a lowly two inches, uncut P. pratensis can reach forty inches high. It has astonishing genetic capabilities: "a highly polymorphic, facultatively apomictic species, having what is probably the most extensive series of polyploid chromosome numbers of any species in the world" (FNA, 2025). In the Watershed, it is also susceptible to the infamous ergot fungus (see photorecords here).
- Annotation