Festuca alaica Drobow

3000-4700m.

Leaf blades with 5–7 vascular bundles. Spikelets tinged violet.

Densely tufted perennial without rhizomes; culms (9-)14-30cm high, erect, slender. Leaf-blades folded-setaceous, up to 7.5cm long, smooth or scabrid on the lower (outer) surface, usually green, with 3 sclerenchyma strands, 1 on the keel and 1 along each margin, 5-nerved; ligule a narrow rim 0.3-0.6mm long. Panicle oblong to narrowly oblong, 2.5-6cm long, contracted, the branches ascending, often appressed to the main axis, scabrid. Spikelets 4-6-flowered, 6-8mm long (excluding the awns); lower glume 23-4mm long, 1-nerved; upper glume 3.5-5, mm long, 3-nerved; lemma elliptic-oblong in side-view, 4-5.5mm long, scabrid in the upper part, with an awn 1-15mm long; palea-keels scabrid or sometimes ± smooth below; anthers 1.7-2.5mm long; ovary glabrous.

Distribution: Pakistan (N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); Turkey eastwards to Afghanistan and southern USSR (Central Asia).

Fl. & Fr. Per.: July-August.

Stony slopes, among pebbles in mountains. Not yet recorded from China [Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan; SW Asia (N Iran)].