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Annual or short-lived perennial with basal buds or a short knotty rhizome. Culms erect or geniculate, 20–90 cm tall. Leaf sheaths keeled, glabrous; leaf blades stiff, flat or involute, 5–30 × 0.2–0.8 cm, glabrous or adaxial surface pilose at base, apex acuminate; ligule ca. 1 mm. Panicle densely cylindrical, 2–15 × 0.5–1.2 cm; branches reduced to a single mature spikelet subtended by 8–12 bristles; axis pubescent; bristles golden or purplish brown when mature, 2–3 times spikelet length. Spikelets elliptic, 1.8–2.5 mm; lower glume ovate, 1/3 as long as spikelet, acute; upper glume broadly ovate, ca. 1/2 as long as spikelet, obtuse; lower floret neuter; lower palea firmly membranous, lanceolate, about as long as the upper floret but narrower, keels wingless, minutely papillose; upper lemma ovate-elliptic, finely rugose. Fl. and fr. Oct–Dec. 2n = 72.
Perennial 3–12 dm from short, knotty rhizomes; sheaths glabrous; blades flat, to 25 cm, 2–8 mm wide, scabrous above and sometimes long-hairy at the throat; infl dense, cylindric, 3–10 cm, green or tawny, its axis scabrous-hispid; bristles 4–12 below each spikelet, 2–12 mm, antrorsely barbed; spikelets 2–2.8 mm; first glume 3-veined, a third as long as the spikelet, the second 5-veined, half to two-thirds as long as the spikelet; sterile lemma equaling the fertile one, clasping a broad palea of equal length, often staminate; fertile lemma transversely rugulose; 2n=36, 72. Moist ground, gardens, salt-marshes, and waste places; tropical N. Amer., n. to Calif., Tex., Kans., Io., Ill., W.Va., and Mass. (S. geniculata)
Perennial 300-800 mm high; rhizome knotty, very slender, branching profusely; culm wiry, node glabrous. Leaf blade 150-300 x 3-4 mm, linear, flat. Inflorescence cylindrical, spike-like, 20-90 mm long; spike-lets subtended by 2-12 bristles; bristles up to 8 mm long, slender, scabrid, yellowish. Spikelet 2.2-3.0 mm long; lower glume 3-nerved; lower floret male or sterile, lemma deeply grooved, palea well devel-oped; upper lemma transversely rugose; anther 0.5-0.7 mm. Flowering: December, January and June.
A grass. It has rhizomes and keeps growing from year to year. It grows 35 cm tall.
