Spartina pectinata Link. Prairie Cordgrass Habit: Tall perennials, with creeping firm, scaly rhizomes. Culms: 1-2 mm. tall or more, glabrous, stout, simple. Blades: 30-80 cm. long or more, 6-15 mm. wide, very scabrous on the margin, tapering to a very slender point, keeled, flat, but quickly involute in drying. Sheaths: Overlapping, crowded below, close. Ligule: Membranous, ciliate with soft slender hairs 1-2 mm long. Inflorescence: Spikes 5-30, often short-peduncled, 5-12 cm. long, ascending or erect, or more or less spreading, or rather slender peduncles, rachis rough on the margins. Spikelets: Including awns 12-15 mm. long, 1-flowered, flattened laterally, sessile, crowded and imbricate in two rows, in one-sided spikes, disarticulating below the glumes, the rachilla not produced beyond the floret. Glumes: Serrulate-hispid on the keel, the first (10 mm. long) acuminate or short awned and equaling the floret, the second longer (12-15 mm. long including awn) with 5 nerves so close together as to appear one, tapering into an awn 7 mm. long. Lemmas: 7-9 mm. long, glabrous except the serrulate-scabrous midnerve or keel which abruptly terminates below the emarginate or 2-toothed apex. Palea: Thin and almost hyaline, obscurely 2-nerved, usually a little longer than the lemma. Habitat: In marshes and along streams, fresh or brackish water. August-October. Kansas Range: East half, southwest fourth, and Cheyenne county. Use: Important soil binder, marsh hay. Synonyms: Spartina michauxiana A.S. Hitchc. Spartina pectinata Bosc ex Link var. suttiei (Farw.) Fern