Bromus ciliatus

Bromus ciliatus, the fringed brome, is a loosely tufted perennial grass in the Poaceae family native to moist meadows, stream banks, and open forests across much of temperate North America. The plant grows sixty centimetres to one and a half metres tall with slender, erect culms arising from short rhizomes. The flat blades are six to twelve millimetres wide, pale green, and slightly hairy, with a small ciliate ligule at the junction of sheath and blade. The open, gracefully drooping panicle is fifteen to twenty-five centimetres long with slender, spreading branches that nod under the weight of the spikelets. Each lance-shaped spikelet contains five to ten florets; the lemmas are conspicuously fringed with long stiff hairs along the margins, giving the species its common name, and bear a short straight awn. Flowering occurs from late spring through summer.