Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Sprawling perennials.

Stems: Rhizomes contracted, culms 30–100 cm tall, hollow, freely branching, glabrous except upwardly bearded at nodes, rooting at lower nodes.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades 3–4 mm wide. Surfaces with scattered, elongate, papillose based hairs along margins and above ligule. Margins entire. Veins parallel. Sheaths keeled, hirsute; ligule a ciliate membrane, 0.7–1.2 mm long. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences terminal, often purplish, flabellate, 3–5 cm long, peduncles exserted up to 12 cm from the subglabrous, bladeless upper sheath, glabrous or slightly bearded at apex, consisting of several ascending racemes, racemosely arranged along a short axis, pedicels of pedicellate spikelet ca. 3 mm long, densely villous, flattened; pedicellate spikelet 3–4 mm long, sterile or sometimes staminate, often purple–tinged, scaberulous; sessile spikelet ca. 5 mm long; first glume subcoriaceous, with a conspicuous pit in the middle, villous on lower ½ scabrous on upper ½ attenuate, often bidentate at apex, second glume ca. 5 mm long, submembranous, keeled, minutely puberulent at apex, otherwise glabrous, apiculate; first (sterile) lemma 2.5–2.7 mm long, hyaline, ciliate on upper margins, fertile lemma reduced to a slender, geniculate, reddish brown awn 15–20 mm long; palea absent. Stamens 3. Ovary superior.

Fruit: Caryopsis ovoid to ellipsoid; 1.5–2 mm long.

Ploidy: 2n = 36; 40; 60

Habitat: Naturalized usually in open; disturbed sites such as pastures; savannas; and along roadsides.

Elevation Range: 5–1,340 m.