Phleum bertolonii

Phleum bertolonii, the smaller cat's-tail, is a slender, tufted perennial grass of the Poaceae family native to most of Europe, south-western Asia, and north-western Africa. The plant grows in loose, often slightly swollen-based tufts up to fifty centimetres tall, occasionally to seventy, with flat, green, somewhat glaucous leaf blades two to six millimetres broad and short, narrow, acute-tipped ligules at the leaf junction. From June through August the flowering culms produce dense, cylindrical, spike-like panicles up to eight centimetres long, in which the tightly packed, awned, one-flowered spikelets give the inflorescence a soft bristly texture. It is most easily confused with the closely related timothy grass (Phleum pratense) but is substantially smaller and has narrow rather than broad, blunt ligules. The species is a typical component of dry calcareous and neutral meadows and pastures.