Cane bluestem

Bothriochloa barbinodis, the cane bluestem, is a perennial bunchgrass in the Poaceae family native to the Americas, ranging from California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Florida in the southern United States south through Mexico, Central America and into much of South America. It grows on dry rocky slopes, open grasslands, roadsides and disturbed ground from sea level into the lower montane zone, and is valued for its drought tolerance and erosion-control properties. The plant forms erect, robust clumps of culms 60 to 120 centimetres tall, with the swollen nodes characteristically bearded with a conspicuous fringe of fine white hairs, the feature giving the species its epithet. The flat to folded leaf blades are 20 to 30 centimetres long and 3 to 6 millimetres wide, blue-green when young and ageing to reddish-yellow. The inflorescence is a fan-shaped, silvery-white, plumose panicle 6 to 12 centimetres long composed of several digitate to subdigitate, hairy racemes; each pair of spikelets consists of a sessile, fertile, awned spikelet and a pedicellate, sterile one, with conspicuous twisted awns 15 to 25 millimetres long. The fruit is a small caryopsis enclosed within the floret.