Habit: 		Tufted perennial.
Culms: 		20-70 cm. tall, slender, terete, glabrous, tufted, with numerous
                curled leaves in a basal cluster.
Blades: 	2-15 cm. long, filiform to 2 mm. wide, in dry weather usually involute, 
                often ciliate, glabrous or sparsely pilose.
Sheaths: 	Shorter than the internodes, glabrous or sparsely pilose, with
                a tuft of long hairs in the throat.
Ligule: 	A ring of short hairs.
Inflorescence: 	A contracted or open diffuse few-flowered panicle 2-5 cm. long, 
                the few short branches erect or ascending, bearing 1 or 2 spikelets 
                (rarely 3 or 4).
Spikelets: 	8-10 mm. long, 5-8-flowered, on short stiff pedicels; florets not 
                closely approximate, uppermost imperfect or rudimentary; rachilla 
                readily disarticulating above the glumes and between the florets.
Glumes: 	8-12 mm. long, subequal, acute or acuminate, persistent, broad, 
                papery, much longer than the lemmas, usually exceeding the uppermost floret.
Lemmas: 	2-toothed, 4-5 mm. long including the triangular, acuminate teeth, 
                convex obscurely several nerved, sparsely villous except the 
                2-toothed summit, with a twisted divergent awn, 5 mm. or more long,
                between the teeth.
Palea: 		Broad, flat, obtuse, ciliolate, reaching to the base of the awn.
Fruit: 		Grain oblong, slightly over 1 mm. long, brown, grooved on one side.
Habitat: 	Dry, rocky, or sandy soil. May-July.
Use: 		A forage grass.
Remarks: 	Producing cleistogens (enlarged fertile, 1- or 2-flowered, cleistogamous spikelets) in the
		lower sheaths, the culms finally disarticulating at the lower nodes.
Synonyms:	Danthonia spicata (L.) Beauv. ex Roemer & J.A. Schultes var. longipila Scribn. & Merr.
		Danthonia spicata (L.) Beauv. ex Roemer & J.A. Schultes var. pinetorum Piper
		Danthonia thermalis Scribn.