Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by rooting at the joints.

Time of bloom: August to September.

Seed-time: September to October.

Range: From Maine to Minnesota and southward to Kansas, Texas, and Florida.

Habitat: Lawns, pastures, and meadows.

A low, slender, branching, almost creeping grass which grows on dry hills and in woods and shady places about dwellings. When young it is much liked by all kinds of stock, but it soon becomes so dry and wiry that no animal will eat it, and its tough, fibrous, interlacing roots make a sod which is very difficult to break up.

Stems ten inches to two feet long, somewhat flattened, usually prostrate at the base and often rooting at the lower joints, erecting the flowering stalks. Sheaths loose and smooth, the leaves two to four inches long but hardly more than an eighth of an inch wide and rough to the touch. Panicle very slender, two to six inches long, weak and bending; glumes of the spikelet very minute, the lower one often lacking; the lemma is rough, strongly nerved, tipped with an awn, and closely enfolds the seed until ripe, when it drops to the ground entire. (Fig. 18.)

Fig. 18. - Nimble Will (Muhlenbergia Schreberi). X 1/5.

Means Of Control

Where the ground can be cultivated without danger of loss from washing, the sod should be broken up and put to a tilled crop before reseeding with clover or grasses of a better quality.