Tausch's goat grass

Aegilops tauschii, Tausch's goatgrass, is an annual grass of the Poaceae native to a broad belt across western and central Asia from Turkey and the Caucasus through Iran, Afghanistan, and into western China. The plant is of major evolutionary significance as the D-genome donor to hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum). Plants are slender, 20 to 50 cm tall, with thin, erect culms and narrow, flat leaf blades; the ligule is a short membrane and the leaf sheaths are smooth. The inflorescence is a cylindrical, slender spike 4 to 12 cm long composed of several appressed spikelets borne in pits along the rachis; each spikelet bears one or two awns at maturity. It grows in open steppes, fallow fields, roadsides, and as a weed of cereal crops, flowering and fruiting in late spring.