Sheep's-fescue - Festuca ovina

Tufted grass without rhizomes or runners, 5 to 40 cm tall. All leaves are bristle like, rough 3 to 15 cm long and 0.5 cm wide. Inflorescence 2 to 12 cm long, erect.

Festuca rubra and other fine-leaved fescues

The basal leaves are rolled into tubes. The panicle is branched, but closes up after flowering. Each spikelet contains two or more florets which are awned. The sheath edges are fused into a tube. A small grass of dry, barren places.

The County Recorder has asked for a specimen of this plant to be retained for verification

Drier grassland.

May and June.

Perennial.

Fairly frequent but local in most of Britain and scarcer in the east of England.

Fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 123 of the 617 tetrads.