Chinese foxtail

Setaria faberi, known as Japanese bristlegrass or giant foxtail, is a robust annual grass of the family Poaceae native to eastern Asia and widely naturalized in temperate North America and Europe as a weed of row crops. The plant grows 60-200 cm tall from fibrous roots, with stout simple or sparingly branched culms that are bent or geniculate at the lower nodes. Leaf sheaths are smooth on the back and ciliate on the margins; the ligule is a short ring of hairs. Leaf blades are flat, linear-lanceolate, 10-40 cm long and 6-20 mm wide, scabrous and characteristically clothed on the upper surface with short stiff hairs that distinguish the species from related Setaria viridis. The inflorescence is a dense, cylindrical, nodding, spike-like panicle 7-20 cm long and 1-2 cm thick, tapering toward the tip and often arching gracefully. Each cluster of 1-3 spikelets is subtended by 1-3 tawny yellow-green or purplish bristles 5-15 mm long that give the inflorescence its bristly foxtail appearance. Spikelets are about 2.5-3 mm long with a transversely rugose upper lemma. It thrives in cultivated fields, gardens, roadsides and disturbed ground.