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