Habit:           Annual, branched at the base.
Culms:       	 20-40 cm. tall, scabrous, erect or decumbent at base, leaves crowded 
                 at the base, at maturity the axis of the plants elongates to over 
                 half the length of the plant and the scythe-shaped culm turns downward 
                 with the tips of the panicle touching the ground. Finally the panicle
                 breaks away as a tumbleweed.
Blades:          2-5 cm. long, 1-2.5 mm. wide, flat, stiff, wavy, smooth, except 
                 minutely scabrous on the white margins, spirally twisted when old.
Sheaths: 	 Loose, flattened, crowded at the base.
Ligule:          Membranous, 3 mm. long, decurrent down the margins of the sheath.
Inflorescence:   Panicle half or more than half the entire height of the plant, 
                 its axis usually falcate, rachis hispid, the 3-13 slender spikes
                 solitary and separated 1-5 cm. remote, mostly along the convex
                 side, rigid, and widely spreading, becoming curved in a loose 
                 spiral, breaking away at maturity as a tumbleweed.
Spikelets:       Narrow, acuminate, 3-6 mm. long, sessile and appressed, 
                 1-flowered, alternate on opposite sides of the long, slender, 
                 3-angled rachis, forming several long, slender spikes, rachilla
                 disarticulating above the glumes, not prolonged.
Glumes:      	 Narrow, stiff, acuminate, somewhat unequal, hispid on the one  
                 nerve, margins scarious, first including the awn 2-4 mm. long 
                 (the awn about one fourth of the length), the second 2.56 mm.
                 long (the awn one third its length).
Lemmas:      	 Narrow, rigid, acuminate, 3-5 mm. long, longer than the body of
                 the second glume, with 3 green nerves, rounded on the back, 
                 minutely hispid on the upper part, slightly pubescent.
Palea:   	 Narrow, nearly as long as and enclosed by the lemma.
Fruit:       	 Grain free within the subrigid lemma and palea.
Habitat:     	 Prairies and plains.  July-September.
Remarks:     	 The spikelets quite variable.