Plants without rhizomes, forming dense tufts, dark green to
bluish green. Flowering stems 20–60 cm long. Leaves mostly basal. Leaf sheaths
open nearly to the base, glabrous, persistent and sometimes turning light brown
at maturity, but not becoming shredded into fibers, the ligule 0.2–0.5 mm long.
Leaf blades 1–15 cm long, 0.5–1.5 mm wide, usually folded or with inrolled
margins, without auricles, roughened. Inflorescences 3–10 cm long, narrow, the
branches ascending at maturity, the lowermost branches with 3–7, mostly
strongly overlapping spikelets. Spikelets 7–10 mm long, 2.5–4.5 mm wide,
elliptic‑lanceolate before flowering (oblong‑elliptic at maturity),
with 3–8 florets. Lower glume 2.0–3.5 mm long, narrowly lanceolate, sharply
pointed at the tip. Upper glume 3.0–5.5 mm long, narrowly lanceolate, sharply
pointed at the tip, 3‑nerved. Lemmas 3.8–5.5 mm long, oblong‑elliptic,
tapered to an awn 0.5–2.5 mm long at the tip, not toothed, very faintly 5‑nerved,
glabrous or roughened to hairy toward the tip, especially along the margins.
Anthers 2.5–3.0 mm long. Fruits 2.2–2.8 mm long, reddish brown. 2n=28,
42. May–July.
Introduced, uncommon in Jackson and Pulaski Counties (native of Europe and Asia; introduced widely in temperate portions of the world).
Disturbed bottomland forests.
The name F. longifolia Thuill., which was applied to
this species by McNeill and Dore (1976) and Yatskievych and Turner (1990),
actually refers to a different, nonweedy species native to coastal areas of
western Europe (Aiken and Darbyshire, 1990). Festuca trachyphylla was
once a common component of turf grass seed mixes but has been replaced
commercially by other, more drought‑tolerant species. Specimens labeled
as having been collected by John Kellogg in St. Louis at the Missouri Botanical Garden presumably are from plants cultivated there.