Ripgut Brome Awns

Description ripgut brome is a loosely cespitose or tufted annual cool season bunchgrass.

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. Soft hairs cover the leaf blades and sheaths. Ripgut brome has no auricles. The common name ripgut brome refers to the heavy sclerotization of the species creating a hazard to livestock.

Cheatgrass bromus tectorum exotic undesirable and state regulated seedlings have very hairy blades and sheaths. 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. Ripgut brome seedlings have a tubular sheath. However it has an extensive fibrous root system and tillers profusely.

It is considered a serious weed of crops in some areas. The spikelets have longer awns than most brome grasses. Within new england it has been collected only near seaports in massachusetts. Bodies are 20 35 mm long and awns are greater than 10 mm.

It produces dense low leafy growth in the fall. 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. The open panicles resemble oats with long often compressed spikelets containing 1 2 inch long awns.

Soft brome bromus hordeaceus. Related or similar plants. The ligule is long whitish and has a jagged tip. Ripgut brome bromus diandrus exotic and undesirable lemmas taper into 2 narrow teeth.