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General: Perennial tufted grass from fibrous roots; stems hollow, erect, 40-80 cm tall.
Leaves: Sheaths open, the upper usually smooth, the lower often short-hairy, the hairs angled downwards; blades 1.5-2.5 mm wide, flat to folded; ligules about 1 (0.8-1.5) mm long, membranous, smooth, the tips blunt and straight, the margins finely jagged and fringed with short hairs.
Flowers: Inflorescence a much contracted, erect, somewhat curved, spikelike panicle 3-8 cm long, with the flowers and branches borne on one side of the axis; spikelets borne mostly in pairs on very short branches, the pairs each with 1 spikelet fertile, unstalked, the other sterile, 4-5 mm long, short-stalked, much flattened and fanlike, consisting of glumes and 7 to 9 sterile (empty) lemmas; glumes of the fertile spikelets 2.5-3.5 mm long, nearly equal, strongly keeled, rough, the margins broad, membranous and small-toothed, the glumes of the sterile spikelets flattened, somewhat narrower than, but otherwise similar to the sterile lemmas; fertile lemmas about 4 mm long, rounded, rough, the awn tips about 0.5 mm long; lodicules about 0.5 mm long; anthers about 3 mm long.
Source: The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia
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