Cynosurus elegans

Cynosurus elegans, the elegant dogstail grass, is a slender annual grass native to the Mediterranean basin and adjacent western Asia. It typically grows 20-60 cm tall, with erect or geniculate culms arising in small loose tufts. The narrow, soft, flat leaf blades are 3-10 cm long and 2-5 mm wide, light green and glabrous, with short membranous ligules. The diagnostic inflorescence is a one-sided, lanceolate to ovate spike-like panicle 2-7 cm long in which sterile spikelets, composed of stiff, pectinate, awn-tipped glumes, form a comb-like ruff that shields the fertile spikelets behind them. Fertile spikelets are awned and bear two or three florets. Flowering occurs in late spring. The grass is found on dry stony hillsides, roadsides, scrub margins, and abandoned cultivation, often in calcareous soils, and is appreciated by florists for ornamental drying despite limited forage value.