Habit: 		Loosely-tufted winter annual.
Culms: 		20-80 cm. tall, erect, branching at base, pubescent or glabrous.
Blades:		Leaves flat, rolled in the bud, rough, often more or less pilose,
		1-3 mm. wide, 2-12 cm long, auricles inconspicuous or absent.
Sheaths: 	Shorter than the internodes, open.
Ligule: 	Membranous, about 1 mm. long.
Inflorescence: 	Terminal spike, long-cylindric, rachis internodes 6-8 mm. long,
		usually disarticulating near the base at maturity, falling entire,
		or finally disarticulating between the spikelets.
Spikelets: 	Few (5-10), 8-10 mm. long, 2-4-flowered, single and alternate oblong-cylindric,
		flatwise at each joint and partly surrounded by the rachis, the joints
		thickened at the summit, glabrous to hispid, plano-convex.
Glumes: 	Indurate, many-nerved, 6-10 mm long, keeled at one side, the awn an extension
		of the keel, the main nerve of the other side ending in a short tooth,
		asymmetrical, convex, both awned with longer awns on the upper spikelets.
Lemmas: 	2-lobed at the apex and awned between the lobes, awns of uppermost spikelets
		like those of the glumes, awns very scabrous, those of the upper spikelets
		about 5 cm. long, of the lower spikelets progressively shorter.
Palea: 		2-keeled, ciliate.
Fruit: 		Grain pubescent at the apex, free, ripening a little in advance of wheat.
Habitat: 	Fields and waste places. May-June.
Remarks: 	Not readily distinguishable from wheat in the vegetative stages.  The spikes shatter
		at or just before the harvesting of the wheat. Introduced from Eurasia.
Synonyms:	Aegilops cylindrica Host var. rubiginosa Popova
		Aegilops tauschii auct. non Coss.