✲✲ Spikelets elongated and hardly flattened, and not quite sessile, especially the lower: rachis scarcely notched, the spikelets with their sides (edges of glumes) next the axis.
Brachypodium.
† A shade-grass with long, conspicuous awns to the more or less drooping spikelets. Common.
B. sylvaticum, Beauv.
†† Growing in the open. Spikelets stouter, stiffer and more erect, with short awns. Not common.
B. pinnatum, L.
Brachypodium may easily be confounded with Bromus, but the spikelets are nearly sessile: their shape and the absence of conspicuous notches distinguish this genus from Agropyrum. Lolium has a conspicuously notched rachis and the spikelets arranged in the other plane.
Poa loliacea, Huds., an uncommon sea-shore weed, may also be placed here; as also Festuca elatior, var. loliacea, Curt. and some forms of Bromus arvensis, var. mollis, L.
No other British grasses resemble Brachypodium: any superficial likeness remarked in species of Hordeum, Festuca, &c. disappears at once on examination.
(b) Spike compound—i.e. with clusters of two or more sessile or sub-sessile spikelets arranged along the rachis.
(i) Spike elongated, fertile spikelets with 3-5 flowers.
✲ Pasture-grass with wiry rachis, on which the spikelets are secund and sessile in clusters: in each cluster a comb-like group of barren glumes subtends one of fertile spikelets.
Cynosurus cristatus, L.