Brome fescue

Vulpia bromoides, the brome fescue or squirreltail fescue, is a slender winter annual grass of the Poaceae family native to Europe, North Africa, and western Asia, and now widely naturalised in the Americas, southern Africa, and Australasia. It forms small loose tufts of fine, hair-like, inrolled basal leaves and produces erect, wiry culms ten to fifty centimetres tall. The inflorescence is a narrow, one-sided, slightly drooping panicle three to twelve centimetres long, with short, appressed branches bearing several spikelets each. The spikelets are lanceolate, four to nine millimetres long, awn-tipped, containing four to seven florets, and turn a pale straw colour as they ripen in late spring. The species favours dry, disturbed, sandy or gravelly ground, roadsides, and overgrazed pastures.