Russia Flora: Plant (20) 50—150 cm tall, with short thick rhizomes. Stems up to 10 mm thick, ascending, branching in lower part, shortly pubescent at nodes, rough below inflorescence. Sheaths glabrous, keeled; leaf blades (5) 10—20 (25) mm wide, flat, glabrous and smooth, with prominent whitish midrib beneath; ligule ciliate. Panicle 10—15 (40) cm long, pyramidal-oblong, with upward-directed rough (pubescent in terminal internodes) branches. Spikelets 4.5—5.5 mm long, lanceolate-ovate, yellowish-greenish or brownish-purplish. Glumes of sessile (bisexual) spikelet hard-leathery, hairy, lower — with 2 additional lateral teeth. Lemmas membranous, lower — with twisted and genuflexed awn 10—14 (16) mm long, rarely awnless. Anthers 2.3—2.8 mm long, 2n=40 (Probatova, Sokolovskaya, 1983a).

Ussuri (Vladivostok). (Fig. 161). Introduced. — On waste ground near railway. VIII—X. — General distribution: European part (southern), Caucasus, Central Asia; Atlantic and Central Europe, Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Iranian, Himalayan, Japanese-Chinese, South Asian, North American (introduced), Australian (introduced). — Described from Siberia and North Africa.

Note. Plants with awnless spikelets belong to var. muticum (Hack.) Grossh. S. halepense in Ukraine is considered a noxious quarantine weed.