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Max Licher @http://swbiodiversity.org, Usage Rights: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)
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Origin: Introduced Season: Cool and Warm
Habitat Description: Thrives in lawns, gardens, cultivated crops, roadsides, open areas, moist waste places.
Plant Communities: Desert Scrub, Semidesert Grasslands, Disturbed Areas
Elevation: 3000 - 5600 feet
Desc: Flattened stems are spreading or erect. The stems are short, from 2 to 12 inches long, and the plant is characterized by its dense, low clumps.
Identification notes: Prostrate annual with bright green soft lax blades that have the typical Poa boat-shaped tips; spikelets 3 to 6 flowered; lemmas with a few long hairs, but not webbed at their base.
Grass Type: Annual Rhizomes: N Stolons: Y
Large Dense Clump (> 2 feet): N Bushy (highly branched): Y
Height with Seedheads: Less than 12 inches
Seedhead Structure: Branched - contracted Seedhead Droops: N
Flowering Period: Mar - Aug
Number of Flowers per Spikelet: Multi-flowered Spikelets One-sided: N
Awns: Absent Three Awns: N Awns Bent: N
Flower and Seedhead Notes: Seedheads are pyramidal with spreading branches. The flower head is triangular to egg shaped and it branches more than once, is often pale, and at times, bright green to purplish. 3 to 8 flowers per laterally compressed spikelet.
Blade Hairy: N Blade with White Margin: N Blade Cross Section: Flat
Blade Notes: Leaves are bright green, wide, flat and soft with the tip curved and prow-like.
Sheath Hairy: N Tuft of Hairs Top of Sheath or Collar: N Ligules: Membranous
Auricles (Ear-like lobes at base of blades): N
Vegetative Notes: It often roots at lower stem nodes and the root system is fibrous. Sheaths closed for about 1/3 their length, round in cross-section or weakly compressed, smooth.
Forage Value: It is one of the sweetest grasses for green fodder, but less useful than hay.
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