Common Name: beardless rabbitsfoot grass

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Non-Native

Lifeform: Graminoid

General: Tufted, sometimes stoloniferous perennial grass with stems 10-100 cm, geniculate and decumbent below, often rooting at the nodes.

Vegetative: Blades 2-13 cm long, 1-6 mm wide, flat, usually glabrous; sheaths glabrous and smooth, ligule membranous, truncate, erose to lacerate, 2-4 mm long.

Inflorescence: Panicles 2-10 cm, ovate-oblong to pyramidal, dense but interrupted, pale green to purplish; spikelets fall entire, disarticulating below glumes; glumes 1.5-2 mm, scabrous on back and keel, one-nerved, apices obtuse or truncate, unawned; lemmas 1 mm, erose, unawned, thin, faintly nerved, smooth, shiny.

Ecology: Moist sandy soils, associated with rivers, streams and irrigation ditches below 7,500 ft (2286 m). Flowers May-October.

Distribution: Native to Eurasia and Northern Africa. Now naturalized throughout most of western N. America, from BC south to CA and east to TX and OK. Also found in several eastern states: SC, VA, CT, and NJ.

Notes: Polypogons have dense inflorescences bearing single-seeded spikelets with equal length glumes which are longer than the florets. This species distinguished by being a mostly decumbent perennial growing by streams and in wet areas, with a branching inflorescence of awnless spikelets.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Polypogon is from Greek polys, many and pogon, beard, viridis means green.

Synonyms: Agrostis semiverticillata, A. verticillata, A. viridis, Polypogon semiverticillatus

Editor: SBuckley 2010, FSCoburn 2014, AHazelton 2015

An Old-World sp. with broadly truncate lemma, dense, lobed infl, and wholly scabrous glumes, is adventive at some ports on the Atlantic coast. (A. verticillata; A. semiverticillata; Polypogon viridis)

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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