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Native. Annual. Propagates by seeds.

Time of bloom: August to October.

Seed-time: September to November.

Range: Maine to Ontario, southward to Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida.

Habitat: Dry upland meadows, pastures, and waste places.

Sterile, sandy, or gravelly soils seem to be preferred by this wiry grass. Stems tufted, six inches to two feet tall, erect, very slender, and usually forking at every joint. Sheaths short, loose, and smooth, with hairy ligules; the blades are one to three inches long, scarcely a tenth of an inch wide, with rough surface and edges involute. Panicles very slender, two to five inches long, the lateral ones often enclosed in the sheaths; spikelets hardly a quarter-inch long, the glumes sharp-pointed, not quite equal; the lemma hard, convolute, closely enfolding the seed with the palea, and terminated with three awns, of which the lateral ones are short but the central one is about as long as the lemma and is held horizontally with a twist at the base. (Fig. 16.)

Fig. 16. - Poverty-grass (Aristida dichotoyna). X 1/5.

Means Of Control

Cultivate and enrich the soil by furnishing it with humus to enable it to retain moisture, thus putting it in condition to support grasses or other plants of better quality.