Festuca muralis

Festuca muralis (often treated within Vulpia) is a small, slender tufted annual grass of the Poaceae found around the Mediterranean basin and adjacent temperate Europe and western Asia, typically 10-40 cm tall. Culms are erect to ascending, slender, glabrous and unbranched above the base, with a few short basal leaves. Leaf blades are flat to involute, narrow, 2-10 cm long and 0.5-2 mm wide, glabrous to sparsely scabrous; ligules are very short membranous rims about 0.2-0.5 mm long with truncate margins. The inflorescence is a narrow, contracted, one-sided panicle 3-12 cm long with short, appressed to slightly spreading branches bearing few short-pedicelled spikelets. Spikelets are 5-9 mm long excluding awns, narrowly lanceolate, laterally compressed and contain 3-6 closely overlapping florets that disarticulate above the glumes. The lower glume is much shorter than the upper, both lanceolate and acute. Lemmas are narrowly lanceolate, scabrous-puberulent, 4-7 mm long and tapered into a slender straight terminal awn 3-12 mm long. Caryopses are slender and adhere to the persistent lemma and palea. The species grows on dry sandy or stony open ground, walls, roadsides and disturbed garrigue.