F. ovina of Michigan Flora.

Roadsides, fields, and disturbed places; dry forests (e.g., oak, pine). An introduced species, naturalized from the Old World and first collected in 1885 in Ingham Co., but from the "Coll. lawn" where it may have been planted; next collection, from a wild setting, is from 1885.

All Michigan specimens of the Festuca ovina complex examined appear to be this entity with lemma awns 1.5–2.8 mm long and the involute leaves 0.8–1.2 mm in diameter. Festuca ovina is a more delicate plant, with narrower leaves usually 0.5–0.6 mm in diameter and lemma awns rarely more than 1 mm long. Some European authors supplant this name with F. brevipila R. Tracey, but we follow Darbyshire & Pavlick (1997) in retaining the name.