梯牧草 ti mu cao

Perennial forming loose or dense tussocks. Culms erect or geniculately ascending, 40–120 cm tall, 5–6-noded, lowest nodes usually swollen and cormlike. Leaf sheaths glabrous, loose; leaf blades 10–50 cm, 3–8 mm wide, glabrous, both surfaces and margins scabrid, apex acuminate; ligule 2–5 mm, rounded. Panicle narrowly cylindrical, 4–15 × 0.5–1 cm, gray-green; branches adnate to central axis. Spikelets obovate-oblong, 3–3.5 mm; rachilla extension absent; glumes oblong, membranous, scaberulous, lower softly hairy on margins, keel conspicuously pectinate-ciliate, apex truncate with stout, 0.5–1.5 mm, scabrid awn; lemma ca. 2 mm, 7-veined, puberulent, especially along veins, apex obtuse; anthers 1.5–2 mm. Caryopsis ca. 1 mm. Fl. and fr. Jun–Aug. 2n = 28, 42.

Grasslands, steppe, forest margins; ca. 1800 m. Anhui, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Shaanxi, Shandong, Xinjiang (Zhaosu), Yunnan [Russia; Europe].

This is a native of Europe and Russia, now widely introduced in temperate regions of the world as a pasture grass (Timothy Grass).