Marsh foxtail

Alopecurus geniculatus, the marsh or water foxtail, is a low-growing perennial grass of the family Poaceae. The stems are characteristically bent (geniculate) and often rooting at the lower nodes, rising 15 to 45 cm tall from a tufted base. The leaves are flat, soft and greyish-green with a blunt ligule. The inflorescence is a dense, soft, cylindrical spike-like panicle 2 to 6 cm long, resembling a slender foxtail; the small one-flowered spikelets each bear a fine awn, and the anthers are pale, often whitish to purplish. It flowers from late spring through summer. Native across Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia and naturalised elsewhere, it favours wet ground, pond margins, ditches, flooded pastures and marshy meadows, tolerating periodic inundation.