Native. Annual. Propagates by seeds. Time of bloom: August to October. Seed-time: September to November. Range: Kansas to California, Arizona, New

Mexico, and Texas. Habitat: Dry, sterile fields, pastures, and waste places.

Fig. 17. - Few-flowered Aristida (Aristida oligantha).

X 1/4.

In the hot, arid regions of the Southwest, which are its home, the Sand-grass is not called a weed, for its thin, wiry stems afford some grazing where otherwise there might be none; but when it appears in soils where better forage can be made to flourish, it should be crowded out. Its seeds are often an impurity of western grass seed.

It grows in tufts, from tufted roots, the stems six to eighteen inches tall, many-branched. Leaves three to six inches long, but hardly more than an eighth of an inch wide, pointed and involute. Panicle slender, four to eight inches long, its short, erect branches in fascicles of two to four; the slim spikelets have the glumes one-nerved, the first only about half as long as the second, the lemma keeled and hairy, its three awns divergent, the central one extended much beyond the other two.

Means of control the same as for the two preceding grasses.