Steinchisma laxum

Steinchisma laxum is a tufted, weakly perennial grass of the family Poaceae growing 30-100 cm tall and native to wet open ground from the southeastern United States and the Caribbean south through Mexico, Central America and tropical South America to Argentina. The plant forms loose clumps from short knotty rhizomes; the slender, often decumbent culms branch from the lower nodes and root where they touch the ground. Leaf sheaths are mostly glabrous, sometimes ciliate on the margins; ligules are short membranous and ciliate. Leaf blades are flat or folded, linear to lanceolate, 5-20 cm long and 3-10 mm wide, soft-textured and bright green. The inflorescence is an open, lax, ovate to pyramidal panicle 8-25 cm long with widely spreading capillary branches that bear small ovoid spikelets 1.5-2.5 mm long on slender pedicels. Each spikelet has an inflated, papery upper glume and bears two florets, the lower staminate or sterile and the upper bisexual with a smooth shining hardened lemma. The grass occupies marshes, swamp margins, ditches, wet savannas and seasonally inundated pine flatwoods.