Foxtail barley

Hordeum jubatum is a densely tufted short-lived perennial or biennial grass of the Poaceae family growing 30-60 cm tall, often forming attractive blue-green clumps. Culms are slender, erect to spreading at the base, glabrous, and tipped with the inflorescence. Leaves are flat, 2-5 mm wide, finely scabrous, with short membranous ligules and unauricled sheaths. The conspicuous inflorescence is a soft, nodding spike 5-12 cm long, silvery-green flushed reddish-purple at maturity, composed of dense whorls of three spikelets at each node; the central spikelet is fertile and bears a single floret while the two lateral spikelets are reduced and sterile. The most striking feature is the very long, flexuous, spreading awns, 3-7 cm long, on lemmas and glumes alike, giving the spike a feathery, fox-tail appearance. The barbed awns can cause injury to grazing animals. Native to grasslands and disturbed open ground across much of North America and northeast Asia, it flowers June to August.