Habit: 		Perennial, with short scaly rhizomes.
Culms: 		1-2.5 m. tall, simple, erect, nodes pubescent or bearded.
Blades: 	30-60 cm. long, 5-13 mm. wide, flat, tapering to a narrow base, very rough, often glaucous.
Sheaths: 	Upper shorter than the internodes, usually smooth and glabrous, auricled.
Ligule: 	2-4 mm. long, thick, stiff.
Inflorescence: 	Panicles narrowly oblong, large, rather dense, bronze-yellow, with the principal
		branches solitary but branching near the base and hence appearing verticillate, the apex
		usually nodding, at first open, contracted and darker after flowering, 15-30 cm. long,
		summit of branchlets, rachis joints and pedicels grayish-hirsute, bearing spikelets
		in pairs, one sessile, the other pedicelled, reduced.
Spikelets: 	Sessile spikelet hirsute, 6-8 mm. long, lanceolate, nearly terete, perfect,
		pedicellate spikelet wanting or rudimentary, represented merely by a hairy pedicel
		at one side of the sessile spikelet.  Spikelets at length drooping, yellowish or
		reddish brown and shining, clothed, especially toward the base, with fawn-colored
		hairs, the twisted awn longer than the spikelet.
Glumes: 	Lanceolate, about equal, leathery, the edges inflexed over the second,
		golden-brown, the first one densely pubescent with long erect hairs,
		9-nerved, second 5-nerved, hairy on the margins and at the base.
Lemmas: 	Sterile lemma thinly hyaline, about 5 mm. long, lanceolate, pubescent
		above; the fertile lemma hyaline, with a long awn, 10-15 mm. long, closely
		spiral up to the bend, then loosely twisted.
Palea: 		Obsolete.
Habitat: 	Prairies, open woods and dry slopes.  July-September.
Use: 		An important forage plant in the prairie and important as a constituent of prairie hay.
Synonyms:	Sorghastrum avenaceum (Michx.) Nash