Gymnopogon ambiguus (Michx.) Bearded Skeletongrass Habit: Tufted perennial with short scaly rhizomes. Culms: 30-60 cm. tall, decumbent at the base, rigid, suberect or ascending, sparingly branched. Blades: Numerous, 2.5-10 cm. long, 4-15 mm. wide, acute, the base rounded, truncate, flat, often folded in drying, firm, spreading, margins scabrous and a little scabrous above. Sheaths: Short, overlapping, except perhaps the lowermost, a villous ring at the summit, otherwise glabrous. Ligule: Membranous, very short. Inflorescence: Purplish, spikes 10-20 cm. long, numerous, slender, one-sided, solitary or in 2's along a rigid, striate axis, erect, becoming widely divaricate when exserted from the sheath, spikelet villous in the axils. Spikelets: Without the awn 4-5 mm. long, remote (especially the lower) with 1 perfect and 0-2 neutral or staminate flowers above, the rachilla disarticulating above the glumes and prolonged beyond the florets as a slender, often awned rudiment, this sometimes with 1-2 slender awns. Glumes: Narrow, acuminate, subequal, scabrous on the keel, rigid, 4-6 mm. long, the first about as long as the lemma, the second longer. Lemmas: 3.5-4 mm. long, thin, cylindrical, involute, purplish, with a hairy callus at the base, sparsely ciliate with stiff hairs on the margins, body scabrous, and with a few scattered hairs, bearing a straight, slender scabrous awn just below a bifid apex, 4-8 mm. long. Palea: 2-keeled, about as long as the lemma. Rudiment: Slender, about 2 mm. long, bearing a rudiment of a floret and an awn 2.5 mm. long. Fruit: Grain linear, free. Habitat: Pinelands of the coastal plain and dry, sandy woods in the interior. August-October. Kansas Range: Southeast (Chautauqua county).