Although I have found this species only once in the state, it has been reported from five counties. In 1936 it was found in Grant County by J. E. Potzger. It is often used in mixtures of lawn grass seed, and I was told by the superintendent of parks at La Porte that it was the grass he had found to thrive in shade. It is remarkable that it has not been found more often.

Culms slender to stout, erect from a decumbent (even shortly stoloneous) base, 5-10 dm, without rhizomes, smooth or often scaberulous below the infl; sheaths finely scabrous; blades soft, 2-6 mm wide, the cauline ones often 15 cm; ligule (2.5-)3-7+ mm, panicle soon long-exsert, ovoid or oblong, the ascending branches in sets of 5-8, with numerous crowded spikelets; pedicels scabrous; spikelets ovate or elliptic, 2-fld and 2.7-3.2 mm or 3-fld and 3-4 mm; glumes lanceolate, incurved, the first 1.7-2.9 mm, the second 2-3.3 mm; lemmas thin, narrowly ovate, sharply 5-veined, acute or acuminate, glabrous except the scaberulous keel and webbed base; anthers 1-2 mm; 2n=14, 28. Native of Europe, intr. in meadows, moist woods, and along roadsides from Nf. to Minn. and S.D., s. to N.C. and Ill., and in the Pacific states.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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