Plants loosely cespitose, with knotty rhizomes to 2 mm thick. Basal rosettes often poorly differentiated; blades few, grading into the cauline blades. Culms 20-55 cm, most forming in the spring, additional culms sometimes produced in the fall; nodes glabrous or sparsely ascending-pubescent; internodes all elongated, glabrous or puberulent; fall phase with a few suberect branches from the lower and midculm nodes, branches not rebranching, blades slightly reduced, secondary panicles partially exserted. Cauline leaves 3-4; lower sheaths not overlapping, sometimes pubescent; upper sheaths overlapping, sparsely to densely pubescent, hairs papillose-based, margins ciliate; ligules 0.3-0.5 mm, membranous, ciliate, cilia longer than the membranous bases; blades 7-17 cm long, 7-23 mm wide, erect, pale yellow-green to bluish-green, glabrous, with 7-11 prominent major veins and 30-110 minor veins, bases tapered or rounded to truncate, margins with papillose-based cilia. Panicles 7-14 cm long, 1-5 cm wide, their length usually more than twice their width, narrowly cylindric, eventually well-exserted, with 9-46 spikelets; branches strongly ascending, stiff. Spikelets 3.2-4.1 mm long, 1.8-2.2 mm wide, obovoid, turgid, puberulent to subglabrous, with rounded apices. Lower glumes 1.7-2.2 mm, narrowly triangular; lower florets staminate; upper florets longer than the upper glumes, mucronate. 2n = 36.

Dichanthelium xanthophysum usually grows on sandy or rocky soils in semi-open pine, oak, or aspen woodlands. It extends from eastern Saskatchewan and northeast Montana to Quebec, New England, and West Virginia. Plants from Minnesota and western Quebec approach D. leibergii in having cauline blades narrower than 10 mm, and papillose-based hairs. Sterile putative hybrids with D. leibergii and D. boreale are rare; those with D. boreale have been called Panicum calliphyllum Ashe.

Culms few-several in loose tufts, erect or ascending, 2-5 dm, glabrous; sheaths loose, often exceeding the internodes, glabrous to pilose or papillose-pilose; blades yellowish-green, erect or nearly so, the larger 10-15 cm נ10-20 mm, often 10+ times as long as wide, glabrous on both sides, slightly narrowed to the rounded, papillose-ciliate base; primary panicle 5-10 cm, very narrow, with erect or narrowly ascending branches; spikelets few, seldom more than 40, minutely puberulent, obovoid, 3.3-3.8 mm; first glume half as long (1.6-2.1 mm) or a little more, triangular- ovate, acute; second glume slightly shorter than the sterile lemma and fr; autumnal phase with 1 or 2 erect branches, bearing scarcely reduced blades equaling or exceeding the reduced panicles; 2n=36. Dry sandy soil; Que. and Me. to Man., s. to N.J., Pa., W.Va., Mich., and Minn. (Dichanthelium x.)

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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