Habit: 		Tufted perennial.
Culms: 		10-40 cm. tall, erect or decumbent at the base, sometimes rooting
                at the lower nodes.
Blades: 	Crowded at the base, light green 3-7 cm. long, 1-4 mm. wide, the 
                upper shorter, folded, abruptly pointed, margin and surface scabrous.
Sheaths: 	Shorter than the internodes, loose, flattened.
Ligule: 	Membranous, fringed, less than 1 mm. long.
Inflorescence: 	Spikes slender, 8-13 (21), usually widely spreading, 5-11 cm. long,
                in 1-3 whorls, often naked at the base, clustered ate the apex of 
                the culm, axils usually pubescent, the slender rachis, scabrous.  
                Inflorescence breaks away as a tumbleweed.
Spikelets: 	Without the awns about 3 mm. long, flattened, 1 perfect flower, 
                crowded in two rows, in verticillate or approximate spikes, the 
                rachilla disarticulating above the glumes and prolonged behind 
                the palea and bearing 1 or more rudimentary awned sterile lemmas.
Glumes: 	1-nerved, acuminate, awn-pointed, narrow, scabrous on the nerves, 
                first about 2 mm. long, the second about as long as the spikelet.
Lemmas: 	Exclusive of the awn,  2-3 mm. long, 3-nerved, obtuse, the nerves 
                ciliate, especially the lateral ones, bearing just below the apex a 
                scabrous awn, usually 2-5(8) mm. long, sterile lemma one, 1.5-2 mm. 
                long, less than 1 mm. wide, truncate, 3-nerved, bearing below the 
                apex an awn shorter than that of the fertile lemma.
Palea: 		Folded, 2-keeled, about equaling the lemma.
Rudiment: 	Cuneate-oblong, rather turgid, about 0.7 mm. wide as folded, 
                truncate, the awn about 5 mm. long.
Fruit: 		Grain free within the lemma and palea.
Habitat: 	Prairies and plains.  May-July; September.