Introduced. Annual or winter annual. Propagates by seeds. Time of bloom: May to July. Seed-time: June to August.

Range: Massachusetts to Indiana, Colorado, Washington, Virginia, and Mississippi. Habitat: Fields and waste places.

The range of this weed has greatly increased of late years. Its early season makes it very objectionable, as its seeds foul the ground before any grain is ripe; the stems also become rough and innutritious very early in the season, so that it is a damage in hay fields as well as among grain. (Fig. 28.)

Culms one to two feet tall, tufted, erect, and very slender. Sheaths and blades softly downy, the latter flat, three to six inches long. The whole plant seems slim and weak, the panicle one-sided, like oats, its branches slender and thread-like, the spikelets pendulous; these are numerous, small, the glumes narrow, rough-hairy; awn straight, longer than the lemma.

Means Of Control

Prevent seed production - which means that the grass must be either cut or pulled as early as May.

Fig. 28. - Downy Brome-grass (Bromus tectorum). X 1/4.

Ground largely overgrown with this grass should be put under cultivation and then be reseeded with other and better forage plants.