General: Annual grass from fibrous roots; stems (40) 50-100 cm tall, smooth, erect or abruptly bent near the base.
Leaves: Sheaths soft-hairy; blades 2-3 (4) mm wide, flat, smooth to soft-hairy on the dorsal surfaces at least, thin, the nerves very narrow, scarcely 1/3 as broad as the intervening areas; ear-shaped lobes lacking at the leaf-bases; ligules jagged, 2-3 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence an open panicle, (10) 15-20 cm long, the lower branches usually drooping, mostly bearing only 1 or 2 spikelets; spikelets closely (6-) 7- to 9-flowered, broadest above the midlength, smooth to appressed short-hairy, 2.5-3.5 cm long; glumes slender, the lower ones 1-nerved, 6-14 mm long, the upper ones 3-nerved, 10-20 mm long; lemmas narrowly lanceolate, long-pointed, keeled, (16) 18-20 mm long, bidentate, the teeth very slender, 2-2.5 mm long, awned, the awns 15-30 mm long; anthers 1-1.5 mm long.
Dry to mesic roadsides, waste places, meadows, rock outcrops and rocky forest openings in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; common on S Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands, infrequent in SC and SE BC; introduced from Eurasia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
