The open panicles resemble oats with long often compressed spikelets containing 1 2 inch long awns.
Ripgut brome awns.
The seeds of the plant can penetrate the skin of livestock and the callus and awns can penetrate the mouth eyes and intestines of livestock.
The spikelets have longer awns than most brome grasses.
The common name ripgut brome refers to the heavy sclerotization of the species creating a hazard to livestock.
It is considered a serious weed of crops in some areas.
Soft hairs cover the leaf blades and sheaths.
Description ripgut brome is a loosely cespitose or tufted annual cool season bunchgrass.
Ripgut brome seedlings have a tubular sheath.
Large spikelets with needlelike awns 1 to 2 inches 2 5 5 cm long distinguishes ripgut brome from the much shorter awns of soft brome.
Soft brome bromus hordeaceus.
Related or similar plants.
Ripgut brome has no auricles.
However it has an extensive fibrous root system and tillers profusely.
Ripgut brome bromus diandrus exotic and undesirable lemmas taper into 2 narrow teeth.
It produces dense low leafy growth in the fall.
Cheatgrass bromus tectorum exotic undesirable and state regulated seedlings have very hairy blades and sheaths.
The ligule is long whitish and has a jagged tip.
Ripgut brome is an annual brome native to europe northern africa and western asia and very widely introduced elsewhere in the world including in north america.
It does not have creeping stolons or rhizomes.
Within new england it has been collected only near seaports in massachusetts.
1st glume is 1 veined.