[146] Festuca glauca, Blue Fescue
Introduction
Festuca glauca, Blue Fescue, is one of about five hundred species of Fescue. It is widely grown as an ornamental grass for its bluish colour.
Taxonomy
Kingdom – Plants
Division – Vascular Plants
Class – Angiosperms (Flowering Plants)
Clade – Monocots
Clade – Commelinids
Order – Poales
Family – Poaceae
Subfamily – Pooideae
Supertribe – Poodae
Tribe – Poeae
Subtribe – Lilinae
Genus – Festuca (Fescue)
Scientific Names – Festuca glauca
There are many cultivars of this and other Festuca species.
Name
The Latin Festuca means stem or stalk. Fescue is cognate coming via Old French. I have only ever seen the English word glaucous used in relation to plants and animals – it means a shade of pale blue-grey.
Description
We have seen [074] Fountaingrass, and [097] Pampas Grass, and there are other grasses to come. The Fescues are generally much smaller than these two ornamental varieties but Festuca glauca is large enough to form a specimen display plant.
It has a clumpy nature and its evergreen leaves are blue enough to be unusual.
The flower stalks are relatively insignificant, certainly not as impressive as Pampas Grass!
Habitat and use
My guess is that the hundreds of species of Festuca have a world-wide distribution but I think Festuca glauca has its origins in the Americas.
Many species of Fescue are used as turf grasses, as pasture or hay for livestock, or as ornamental plants.
There are many cultivars of Festuca glauca, which tend to be named specifically as blue.
Other Notes
There are far too many species of grass for me to cover and most of them are far too difficult to identify. An ordinary garden lawn may have dozens of species. You can take this post as representing all the other smaller ornamental varieties that people have in their gardens – not the Pampas Grass and others that may adorn public parks.
See also
You can guess what is to still come from the grass family. There are a few more …
The Species of Britain 