Selected Plants of Navajo Rangelands

Take care of our Navajo Rangelands

Brome, Japanese

Seedhead with leaf blades

Japanese brome is an introduced, annual grass from 8 to 48 inches tall. Its sheaths are hairy; the blades are glabrous to hairy. The inflorescence is an open panicle bearing 6 to 13 caryopses. Roots may be shallow, or surprisingly deep for an annual. Roots of plants in Lewistown, Montana, reached depths of 5 feet, with most roots concentrated between 2.7 and 4.7 feet below ground. Japanese brome root density surpassed that of five other annual bromes also occurring at the site. Japanese brome has florets with somewhat flattened lemmas with awns mostly 1/4 to 1/3 inch long. It is an annual found in sandy areas with abundant moisture. The stems and leaves are covered in dense, white pubescence.

Stems with characteristic white fuzz along them
Leaf blade and sheath with tiny white hairs
Growth habit showing stems with characteristic white fuzz along them
Reddish stems bent with weight of multiple spikelets
Reddish-green spikelet showing arrangement of seeds and awns
Bromes in situ with other bromes in grassland habitat
Green spikelets with closely appended seeds and protruding awns

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