Chloris verticillata Nutt.
Windmillgrass

Habit: 		Tufted perennial.
Culms: 		10-40 cm. tall, erect or decumbent at the base, sometimes rooting at the lower nodes.
Blades: 	Crowded at the base, light green 3-7 cm. long, 1-4 mm. wide, the upper shorter, folded, abruptly
		pointed, margin and surface scabrous.
Sheaths: 	Shorter than the internodes, loose, flattened.
Ligule: 	Membranous, fringed, less than 1 mm. long.
Inflorescence: 	Spikes slender, 8-13 (21), usually widely spreading, 5-11 cm. long, in 1-3 whorls,
		often naked at the base, clustered ate the apex of the culm, axils usually pubescent, the slender rachis,
		scabrous.  Inflorescence breaks away as a tumbleweed.
Spikelets: 	Without the awns about 3 mm. long, flattened, 1 perfect flower, crowded in two rows, in
		verticillate or approximate spikes, the rachilla disarticulating above the glumes and
		prolonged behind the palea and bearing 1 or more rudimentary awned sterile lemmas.
Glumes: 	1-nerved, acuminate, awn-pointed, narrow, scabrous on the nerves, first about 2 mm. long,
		the second about as long as the spikelet.
Lemmas: 	Exclusive of the awn,  2-3 mm. long, 3-nerved, obtuse, the nerves ciliate, especially the
		lateral ones, bearing just below the apex a scabrous awn, usually 2-5(8) mm. long, sterile lemma one,
		1.5-2 mm. long, less than 1 mm. wide, truncate, 3-nerved, bearing below the apex an awn shorter
		than that of the fertile lemma.
Palea: 		Folded, 2-keeled, about equaling the lemma.
Rudiment: 	Cuneate-oblong, rather turgid, about 0.7 mm. wide as folded, truncate, the awn about 5 mm. long.
Fruit: 		Grain free within the lemma and palea.
Habitat: 	Prairies and plains.  May-July; September.
Kansas Range:	Throughout.