Yellow bluestem

Bothriochloa ischaemum, the yellow bluestem or Turkestan bluestem, is a warm-season tufted perennial grass in the family Poaceae native to a broad swath of Eurasia from the Mediterranean through Central Asia to China, and widely introduced as a forage grass and now naturalized (often invasively) across the southern United States, Mexico, South America, southern Africa, and Australia. The plant forms dense bunches 30-90 cm tall with slender, erect to ascending culms arising from a short knotty base. The leaf blades are flat or folded, narrow (2-5 mm wide), 5-20 cm long, glaucous bluish-green, and rough to the touch on the margins; the basal sheaths are often persistent and the ligule is a short ciliate membrane. The inflorescence is a digitate cluster of 2-9 erect to ascending slender racemes 3-7 cm long, each bearing paired (sessile and pedicelled) spikelets that progressively disarticulate from the slender hairy rachis at maturity. The sessile spikelet is fertile, lanceolate, 3-5 mm long, and bears a slender geniculate awn 10-18 mm long arising from the lemma; the pedicelled spikelet is sterile and smaller. Mature inflorescences have a characteristic silvery-fawn appearance from the long awns and silky pedicel hairs.