Flora of North America species comparison

35-150 cm, stout, compressed.

more or less strongly compressed or keeled, sides usually glabrous or sparsely pubescent distally;

ligules 0.3-3 mm, membranous, erose or ciliate, cilia often themselves fimbriate;

blades 8-50 cm long, 2-12 mm wide, flat or folded, both surfaces usually glabrous or scabridulous, or the adaxial surfaces sparsely pilose basally.

terminal and axillary, 9-40 cm, 1/3 – 3/4 as wide as long, usually dense; ultimate branchlets usually appressed, 1-sided, scabridulous;

pedicels 0.5-1.5 mm, usually appressed, sometimes with 1-several slender hairs at the apices.

relatively narrow;

branches few, stiffly ascending.

usually 1.6-3.8 mm, usually subsessile, lanceolate, green, purple-tinged, or purple, glabrous.

2.4-3 mm long, usually less than 0.6 mm wide, conspicuously stipitate, purple, often falcate, subsecund along the branchlets.

2/5 – 3/4 as long as the spikelets, 3-veined, midveins keeled;

upper glumes and lower lemmas subequal or the glumes slightly longer, often spreading slightly apart at the apices, midveins keeled, usually scabridulous apically;

lower florets sterile;

lower paleas to 2/3 as long as the lower lemmas;

upper florets 1.4-2 mm long, 0.6-0.8 mm wide, 2/5 – 3/4 as long as the spikelets, occasionally stipitate, lustrous, with a tuft of minute, thickish hairs at the apices;

upper lemmas thick, stiff, clasping the upper paleas throughout their length.

0.3-1 mm, membranous;

blades usually 5-12 mm wide, flat, mostly glabrous or scabridulous, bases about equal in width to the subtending sheaths.

florets stipitate, stipes to 0.4 mm, slender.

=18.