| Author | (Michaux) Beauvois | |
| Distribution | Mountains only. Specimens at herbarium NY from Rutherford, Transylvania, and Yancey counties were misfiled and are other species.
Boreal North America from Greenland and AK south to northeastern GA, NM, and CA. | |
| Abundance | Rare to uncommon; known from 9 counties in the state. As a result, the website editors suggest a State Rank of S1S2 instead of S1. This is a State Special Concern species. | |
| Habitat | Moist to wet meadows, streamsides, damp areas in grassy balds, bogs, bases of cliffs. Sites tend to be moist to wet, at least with some seepage. |
| Phenology | Flowering and fruiting June-August. | |
| Identification | Canada Reedgrass is rhizomatous and usually grows in colonies. Flowering stems (culms) typically grow 3-4 feet tall, with a narrow to somewhat open inflorescence. Cain's Reedgrass (C. cainii) and Porter's Reedgrass (C. porteri) are best told from Canada Reedgrass by having awns surpassing the lemmas (vs. shorter than lemmas). Compared with Canada Reedgrass, Narrowspike Reedgrass (C. stricta ssp. inexpansa) has broader leaves and the inflorescence is thicker and denser. That taxon's spikelets measure 4-5 mm long (vs. 3-4 mm long in the former), and the lemma awn is much thicker than the callus hairs (vs. about same width and thus hard to pick out). | |
| Taxonomic Comments | The nominate variety occurs in NC.
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| Other Common Name(s) | Canada Reedgrass, Bluejoint, Bluejoint Grass, and several others | |
| State Rank | S1 [S1S2] | |
| Global Rank | G5 | |
| State Status | [SC-V] | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | OBL link |
| USACE-emp | FACW link |
