Please try our next iteration of the Michigan Flora Online here. Beginning on February 1, 2023, michiganflora.net will point to this new site.
The new site offers several benefits over the existing website, including real coordinate mapping, giving a clearer view of the density of documentation as well as more precision about plant distributions and their link to landforms. We will also have the ability to update species pages more regularly, both in terms of new collections and as more existing Michigan specimens are georeferenced. In addition, we have a better photo display, and offer indented keys.
Common Name:
BEACH GRASS, MARRAM GRASS
|
Coefficient of Conservatism:
10
Coefficient of Wetness:
5
Wetness Index:
UPL
Physiognomy:
Nt P-Grass
A. A. Reznicek
Common to abundant on the sandy shores and dunes of Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior. May occur a short distance inland, especially near Lake Michigan, on older dunes and blowouts.
The only truly inland occurrence, entirely divorced from the modern Great Lakes, is on the University of Michigan Biological Station grounds on the southeast shore of Douglas Lake, Cheboygan Co. (first collected by J. H. Ehlers 7277 in 1920, MICH – and observed as recently as 2018). Its occurrence there is a modest mystery, though Solidago houghtonii, also long known from the same locality, was noted as having been planted there in 1935. Some other somewhat inland occurrences, e.g., in Muskegon Co., have spread from plantings to stabilize bare sand.
Observations on A. breviligulata at the Sleeping Bear Dunes, Leelanau Co., by F. C. Gates showed that the rhizomes may grow as much as 2.4 m in a single year as sand accumulates. In possessing both vertical and horizontal rhizomes, this plant is unusually well adapted for survival on sand dunes.
×Calammophila don-hensonii Reznicek & Judz. is a hybrid with Calamagrostis canadensis known from Lake Superior. See Delisle-Oldham, Oldham, & Catling (2008) for a morphological analysis of non-maritime Ammophila populations.