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).