Bristle-tail grass

Festuca incurva (also placed in Vulpia or Catapodium) is a small, tufted annual grass in the Poaceae rarely exceeding 5–25 cm in height. Culms are slender, ascending to spreading, geniculate at the lower nodes and often curving outward, smooth and glabrous. The leaf sheaths are smooth with a short, membranous ligule; the blades are narrow, 0.5–1.5 mm wide, flat to involute, soft, and bright green to yellow-green. The inflorescence is a stiff, narrow, one-sided spike-like raceme or panicle 2–6 cm long, the spikelets borne on very short, appressed pedicels along an often curving rachis. Spikelets are 3–10 mm long, laterally compressed and 4–10-flowered, with subequal lanceolate glumes; the lemmas are 2.5–4 mm long, smooth, and either awnless or with a short awn-tip. The fruit is a small caryopsis tightly enclosed by the lemma and palea. It grows on dry, open, often saline or stony ground in Mediterranean and temperate regions, flowering in spring.