Dactylis glomerata L.
Orchardgrass

Habit: 		Tall perennials in large clumps, with creeping rhizomes.
Culms: 		60-120 cm. tall, tufted, simple.
Blades: 	7-25 cm. long, 2-8 mm. wide, long acuminate, flat, scabrous on surfaces and margins.
Sheaths: 	Upper shorter than the internodes, lower longer, flattened, smooth to rough.
Ligules: 	Membranous, 2-5 mm. long.
Inflorescence: 	Panicles 5-20 cm. long, contracted, with the spikelets crowded at the ends of the few stiff
		branches in one-sided headlike clusters, branches ascending or spreading in flower, contracted after flowering.
Spikelets: 	5-9 mm. long, 2-5-flowered, crowded, compressed, nearly sessile in dense fascicles, rachilla
		finally disarticulating between the florets.
Glumes: 	1-3-nerved, acute often mucronate, the second the larger, hispid ciliate on the keel.
Lemmas: 	4-6 mm. long, about 5-nerved, compressed-keeled, pointed or short-awned, more rigid than the glumes,
		more or less hispidulous, ciliate on the keel.
Palea:  	Nearly as long as its lemma, 2-keeled.
Habitat: 	Fields, meadows, and waste places.  May-June.
Kansas Range: 	Scattered, but more common eastward.
Use: 		Commonly cultivated as a meadow and pasture grass; of most value in mid spring and in somewhat
		shaded situations.
Synonyms:	Dactylis glomerata L. ssp. glomerata
		Dactylis glomerata L. var. ciliata Peterm.
		Dactylis glomerata L. var. detonsa Fries
		Dactylis glomerata L. var. vivipara Parl.