Lesser quaking grass

Briza minor, the lesser quaking grass, is a delicate annual grass in the family Poaceae native to the Mediterranean basin and western Europe and now widely naturalized across temperate regions including Britain, North America, Australia, and South America. Plants are erect, slender, and 10-50 cm tall, with smooth glabrous culms emerging in small tufts from a fibrous root system. Leaf blades are flat, soft, 2-6 mm wide and 5-15 cm long, with rough margins and a glabrous bright-green colour; the ligule is a conspicuous papery membrane 3-6 mm long. The inflorescence is a delicate open pyramidal panicle 5-15 cm long with very slender wavy branches bearing many small dangling spikelets that tremble in the slightest breeze, giving the grass its common name. Each spikelet is broadly heart-shaped to triangular, 3-5 mm long and about as broad, somewhat shorter and narrower than in B. media or B. maxima, and contains 4-8 closely overlapping florets with rounded saccate lemmas. The spikelets are pale green when young and turn straw-coloured or purplish at maturity. The species inhabits dry to moist meadows, lawns, roadsides, and disturbed ground.