Red Fescue - Festuca rubra

Tuft forming, 15 to 80 cm tall usually with creeping rhizomes and surface runners. Basal leaves and those of runners are all bristle like and up to 40 cm long with groove on upper side. Those of the flowering stems are flat when fresh 0.5 to 3 mm wide. Not always red tinged.

Festuca ovina

The basal leaves are rolled into tubes. The panicle is branched, but closes up after flowering. Each spikelet contains two or more florets which are awned. The sheath edges overlap.

Meadows, roadside verges, dry grassland etc.

May to July.

Perennial.

Very common throughout Britain.

Very common in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 542 of the 617 tetrads.