Rock bent

Agrostis rupestris is a small densely tufted perennial grass of the Poaceae family forming compact cushions or low tussocks 5-25 cm tall from a fibrous knotty crown without rhizomes. Culms are erect or geniculately ascending, slender, smooth, with few short nodes. Leaf blades are mostly basal, narrow, setaceous (bristle-like) to filiform, 2-8 cm long and well under 1 mm wide, often inrolled, finely scabrous on the margins and slightly glaucous; leaf sheaths are smooth, the basal ones persisting and forming a brownish tuft. The ligule is a short truncate membrane 0.5-2 mm long. The inflorescence is a slender, narrow to slightly contracted panicle 2-6 cm long with short ascending branches, typically purplish or reddish-tinged. Spikelets are 2-3 mm long, one-flowered, with two unequal, lanceolate, persistent purple-flushed glumes that nearly equal the floret. The lemma is shorter than the glumes, thin and bears a short geniculate dorsal awn 2-4 mm long arising from the lower half of the back. The palea is small or absent. Native to alpine and arctic-alpine stony pastures, snow-beds, screes and grassy ridges of the European and Asian high mountains, flowering in mid- to late summer.