General:
Annual grass from fibrous roots; stems hollow, erect, (10) 20-50 cm tall.

Leaves:
Sheaths open, inflated; blades 1.5-2.5 mm wide, flat, more or less rough, the margins freed from the sheaths at different levels; ligules 2-7 (11) mm long, prominent, membranous, blunt, the margins coarsely jagged to toothed.

Flowers:
Inflorescence a dense, erect, bristly, egg-shaped, panicle 1-4 cm long; spikelets borne mostly in pairs on very short branches, the pairs each with 1 spikelet fertile, 2-flowered, the upper flowers sometimes reduced to tiny rudiments, unstalked, the other sterile, 4-5 mm long, short-stalked, much flattened and fanlike, consisting of glumes and several sterile (empty) lemmas, the lemmas similar to the glumes; glumes of the fertile spikelets 5-6 mm long, nearly equal, strongly keeled, flattened, awned, the awns 1-2.5 mm long, the glumes of the sterile spikelets keeled, fringed with short hairs, long-pointed; fertile lemmas about 5 mm long, rounded on the back, awned, the awns 3-10 mm long; lodicules about 0.2 mm long; anthers about 2 mm long.

Source:  The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia

If more than one illustration is available for a species (e.g., separate illustrations were provided for two subspecies) then links to the separate images will be provided below. Note that individual subspecies or varietal illustrations are not always available.

Illustration Source:  The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia