Common Name: plains bristlegrass

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Graminoid

General: Densely caespitose perennial with stems 60-120 cm, rarely branched above, scabrous below the nodes and panicles.

Vegetative: Sheaths keeled, glabrous, with few white hairs at throat; ligules 2-4 mm, densely ciliate; blades 15-20 cm long, 7-15 mm wide, flat, upper surface scabrous.

Inflorescence: Panicles 10-30 cm long, 1-2 cm wide, uniformly thick from base to apex, dense, rarely lobed basally, rachises scabrous and loosely pilose; bristles usually solitary, 10-20 mm, soft, antrorsely scabrous; spikelets 2-2.5 mm, subspherical; lower glumes a third to half as long as spikelets, upper glumes three-quarters as long as spikelets.

Ecology: Found in sandy, loamy or clayey soils of the desert grasslands from 3,500-7,000 ft (1067-2134 m); flowers May-October.

Notes: Setaria spp. have inflorescences with short, mostly contracted branches and single-seeded, hard spikelets subtended by persistent bristles that remain on the plant after the spikelets have fallen.This species is distinguished by its scabrous to puberulent leaf blades and spikelike inflorescence.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Setaria is from Latin saeta, a bristle or hair, while vulpiseta is named for German botanist Johann Samuel Vulpius (1760-1846).

Synonyms: Setaria macrostachya, Chaetochloa vulpiseta, Panicum vulpisetum

Editor: SBuckley, 2010