Bluejoint is the most common and widespread Calamagrostis species in North America, growing from Greenland to Alaska and south to North Carolina, Kansas and California. It grows in wet meadows, marshes, sedge meadows, fens, bogs, swamps and the edges of moist woods, and in some of these habitats it is the dominant ground cover. In Quebec it is native and occurs from the St. Lawrence Valley, the Eastern Townships, the Laurentians and the Outaouais to the centre and north of the province. Its tough rhizomes hold soil in wet places, and it is one of the first plants to return to burned, logged or oil-spill sites.
The French botanist André Michaux described the plant in 1803 as Arundo canadensis in his Flora Boreali-Americana, and Palisot de Beauvois moved it to the genus Calamagrostis in 1812. The name foin bleu, recorded by Marie-Victorin, reflects its long use as wild hay. Livestock and wild grazers eat it, and it makes good hay when cut before the seed heads form. In Alaska and in white spruce plantations it is treated as a weed because it forms dense stands that crowd out tree seedlings.