Beaked panicgrass

Coleataenia anceps, the beaked panicgrass (formerly Panicum anceps), is a long-lived rhizomatous perennial grass of the family Poaceae. It forms loose colonies from creeping scaly rhizomes and produces stout, erect, glabrous culms reaching up to 1.3 metres in height. The leaf blades are flat, firm and elongated, often half a metre long and several millimetres wide, with conspicuously keeled, slightly compressed sheaths from which the species takes its name anceps, meaning two-edged. Inflorescences are open, pyramidal panicles up to 40 cm long bearing numerous pale-green to yellowish spikelets; each spikelet contains one fertile floret and a distinctive falcate, beak-shaped second glume that exceeds the lemma and inspires the common name. Native to the south-eastern United States and extending north to New Jersey and west to Kansas and Texas, it grows in moist to wet woodland edges, swamp margins, ditches and seasonally flooded openings. It provides forage for cattle and horses, is browsed by deer and its seeds are taken by birds, and the species is used in revegetation of disturbed sites and mine spoils.