Festuca ambigua

Festuca ambigua is a slender tufted annual grass of the Poaceae family growing 8-30 cm tall, forming small loose clumps from a fibrous root system. Culms are slender, erect or geniculately ascending, smooth, with one or two nodes, sometimes branching from the base. Leaf blades are very narrow, inrolled to almost setaceous, 2-8 cm long and well under 1 mm wide, scaberulous, often somewhat glaucous; leaf sheaths are smooth and the ligule is a short truncate membrane less than 1 mm long. The inflorescence is a narrow, contracted to slightly open panicle 2-8 cm long with short stiff ascending branches, dense at maturity and frequently tinged purplish. Spikelets are lanceolate, 5-9 mm long, three- to seven-flowered, and the rachis disarticulates above the persistent glumes at maturity. Glumes are very unequal: the lower minute or vestigial, the upper lanceolate-acute and shorter than the lowest lemma. Lemmas are firm, lanceolate, scabrid in the upper part and taper into a stiff straight terminal awn 3-7 mm long. Native to dry open ground, garrigue, sandy soils and rocky slopes throughout the Mediterranean basin and adjacent southern Europe and North Africa, where it flowers in spring and matures quickly during the early summer drought.