Plants perennial, with rhizomes lacking, forming tufts or
small clumps, the herbage densely soft‑hairy, velvety to the touch, light
green. Flowering stems 35–150 cm long, erect, sometimes from spreading bases.
Leaf sheaths rounded on the back, the ligule 1.5–4.5 mm long, with an uneven,
minutely hairy margin. Leaf blades 4–45 cm long, 4–12 mm wide, flat.
Inflorescences 5–20 cm long, usually relatively dense panicles with strongly to
loosely ascending branches, erect or nearly so. Spikelets 3.5–5.5 mm long,
slightly flattened laterally, disarticulating below the glumes, with 2 florets,
the lowermost perfect and awnless, the uppermost staminate and awned. Glumes
3.2–5.5 mm long, longer than the rest of the spikelet, keeled, sharply pointed
or minutely awned at the tip, softly hairy, sometimes only along the midnerve,
the lower glume lanceolate and 1‑nerved, the upper glume ovate and 3‑nerved.
Lemmas 1.7–2.5 mm long, ovate to oblong‑elliptic, rounded to bluntly
pointed at the tip and sometimes with 2 minute teeth, rounded on the back,
nerveless, glabrous or nearly so, shiny, the lemma of the uppermost floret with
an awn 1–2 mm long, this curled or hooked at the tip. Palea slightly shorter
than the lemma, membranous, 2‑nerved. Stamens 3, the anthers 1.5–2.5 mm
long. Fruits 1.5–2.0 mm long, elliptic in outline, yellow. 2n=14.
May–July.
Introduced, uncommon, mostly in eastern Missouri (native of
Europe, widely but sporadically introduced in the U.S. and Canada). Edges of glades and mesic to dry upland forests, banks of streams and rivers, and margins
of ponds; also levees, pastures, old fields, railroads, and disturbed, grassy
areas.
This species sometimes is planted for forage in the southern
United States. Where abundant, it can be an important cause of hay fever.