Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Bromus ciliatus L.
- Family: Grass (Gramineae)
- Flowering: June-October
- Field Marks: This is the only perennial Bromus with strongly folded glumes and lemmas.
- Habitat: Moist ground in woods and swamps.
- Habit: Perennial grass from rhizomes.
- Stems: Upright, branched or unbranched, slender, smooth or sometimes hairy at the nodes, up to 5 feet tall.
- Leaves: Elongated, smooth or hairy on both surfaces, up to 3/4 inch wide; sheaths smooth or hairy.
- Flowers: Borne in spikelets, with many spikelets in an open, pendulous panicle, the panicle up to 10 inches long.
- Spikelets: 3- to 10-flowered, up to 1 1/2 inches long; glumes folded, the first one 1-nerved and 1/4-1/3 inch long, the second one 3-nerved and 1/3-1/2 inch long; lemmas folded, 5- to 7-nerved, about 1/2 inch long, hairy, with an awn up to 1/4 inch long.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: 0.
- Stamens: 3.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, smooth.
- Fruits: Grains ellipsoid, smooth.
- Notes: Gleason and Cronquist use the name Asteraceae for this family. When the spikelets are mature, the rachis between the lemmas is sometimes exposed. The spikelets occasionally become purplish at maturity. The grains are eaten by wild birds.
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