Japanese name: ネズミノオ（鼠の尾） Scientific name:Sporobolus fertilis var. fertilis
[Overview]
A perennial 20–70 cm tall, found along roadsides and on vacant lots.
The whole plant is almost hairless.
It has strong roots.
The culms (stems) are erect and form clumps; they are tough and hard to break.
Many leaves arise from the base of the plant; they are linear, 20–60 cm long and 0.2–0.6 cm wide, folded lengthwise along the midrib, with the margins rolled inward.
The margins of the leaf sheaths have hairs.
A conical flower spike 15–40 cm long and 0.5 cm wide appears at the top of the stem, but the branches are short and erect, so it looks like a single spike.
The flower spike bears many densely set spikelets.
The spikelets are lead-green to pale greenish brown, 2–2.5 mm long, and consist of one floret.
The glumes and lemmas are translucent, membranous and glossy, and have no awns.
The grain is reddish brown and protrudes from between the glumes; the pericarp peels off easily, so the seeds often fall bare.
[Notes]
The Japanese name likens the shape of the flower spike to a rat's tail.
