General: Annual (or winter annual) tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems 10-30 (40) cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open; blades more or less rough at least on the upper surfaces, 2-4 mm wide; ligules jagged, long-pointed, (2) 3-4 (5) mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence a pale green cylindrical panicle, mostly 2-6 cm long; spikelets less than 4 mm long (excluding the awns); glumes (2) 2.3 (2.6) mm long, fringed with fine, stiff hairs on the keels, long-hairy on the lateral nerves, tips rounded; lemmas with margins fused to their midlength, equal to or slightly longer than the glumes, awned, the awns inserted 0.5 mm above the base, usually abruptly bent, slender, longer than the glumes (extending 2.5 mm or more beyond them), about 2-3 mm long; anthers 0.3-0.4 (0.5) mm long.
Wet to moist vernal pools, roadsides and meadows in the lowland zone; rare on S Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and SC BC; E to S SK and S to ME, MA, PA, NC, FL, MS, LA, TX, NM, AZ, MX and CA.
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)
