Poa secunda

Poa secunda is a densely tufted perennial grass of the Poaceae family growing 15-70 cm tall in compact bunches from a fibrous, knotty crown without rhizomes. Culms are erect, slender, smooth and unbranched. Leaf blades are mostly basal, narrow, folded or rolled inwards, 4-15 cm long and 1-2 mm wide, with prow-shaped tips characteristic of Poa; the basal sheaths are smooth and pale, the upper sheaths closed for most of their length. The ligule is a membranous structure 1-4 mm long, acute or obtuse. The inflorescence is a narrow, contracted to slightly open panicle 4-15 cm long with ascending to appressed branches in remote whorls, often interrupted in the lower part and somewhat one-sided ('secunda'). Spikelets are lanceolate, 4-7 mm long, slightly compressed, two- to six-flowered, often purplish-tinged. Glumes are subequal, lanceolate-acute; lemmas are firm, five-nerved, sometimes pubescent on the keel and marginal nerves, lacking the cobwebby callus hairs of many congeners. Native to a very wide range of dry to mesic grasslands, sagebrush steppe and montane meadows across western North America, an important early-season forage grass.