We are visiting the ski town of Winter Park in Colorado (after a week stay at nearby Breckenridge), and two days back we had stopped at the Winter Park & Fraser Chamber building to inquire about hiking trails near the town.
The rather large building serves as the welcome center for people staying at the adjacent small towns, and while my wife went inside to find some new hiking trails I had marveled at the absolutely gorgeous ornamental grasses that graced the front of the structure.
The grasses clustered under a statue of a moose, one of those magnificent animals that rumbled in the nearby forests and hills. Each specimen was almost a meter tall and formed perfect domed clumps, their needle thin leaves a beautiful blue-green color. Above each mound, masses of light brown inflorescence rose like questing antennae. I tagged the ornamentals as Festuca glauca, perhaps of the variety “Boulder Blue”, and its common name locally is blue fescue.
F. glauca is a C3 grass in the subfamily Pooideae, and it is native to Europe. It does not tolerate wet, poorly drained soils, and it is relatively short lived. The color of the foliage comes out best in full sun, although it can tolerate partial shade. I germinated some in Florida, but I fear the hot and humid weather there will surely affect its growth. The trend of C4 grasses dominating the subtropical weather of that state likely holds tru in this case. On the other hand, the dry cold weather up here in the mountains is probably paradise to it, as the large size of the mounds startled me.
I have seen other F. glauca ornamentals in Colorado, most notably during my stay in Broomfield in 2023, when their relatively small mounds decorated the parking lots and front gates areas of hotels. But none were the size of these specimens, and I spent some time gawking over them until I had to reluctantly accompany my wife to a nearby hiking trailhead.
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