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Hordeum brachyantherum
Also called Northern Barley, California Barley
Meadow barley is a tufting perennial bunchgrass native to western North America, coastal Kamchatka and coastal Newfoundland, growing to about a metre tall with purplish barley-type seed heads. It is used in California for restoring native grassland, and it is a grass rather than a common garden or houseplant, so it is grown mainly outdoors in restoration and wildflower-style plantings.
Hordeum brachyantherum, known by the common name meadow barley, is a species of barley. It is native to western North America from Alaska to northern Mexico, coastal areas of easternmost Russia (Kamchatka), and a small area of coastal Newfoundland.
The diploid cytotype occurs only in California, throughout the state, while everywhere else plants are tetraploid.
One major function of perennial plants is to restore the land and ecosystem. Hordeum brachyantherum is used to restore the native perennial grasslands in California and to reduce the density of non-native annual plants. The perennial plants can rapidly recover the soil microbial biomass in the grasslands due to the carbon supply maintained by the perennial plants. The species diversity and composition is not affected by the restoration, however, the relative proportion of the native plant biomass increased in the restored perennial grassland.
Hordeum aegiceras · Arizona barley · Hordeum bogdanii · Hordeum brevisubulatum · Bulbous barley · California Barley · Cape Wild Barley · Hordeum chilense · Hordeum comosum · Hordeum cordobense · Dwarf barley · Two Rowed Barley
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Hordeum brachyantherum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
