Annual herb, tufted 10 cm - 1.5 m tall Leaves: alternate, two-ranked. Sheaths loose, usually shorter than internodes, marginally fringed with short hairs. Ligules to 0.5 mm long, membranous, fringed with hairs. Blades 5 - 20 cm long, 3 - 10 mm wide, lance-shaped with a long-pointed tip, thin and flat, parallel-veined, minutely rough along the margins. Inflorescence: a branched arrangement of spikelets (panicle), lax, open, 5 - 30 cm long, almost as wide, with a few very thin branches. Fruit: a caryopsis, indehiscent, enclosed within the persistent lemma and palea. Culm: upright, eventually sprawling, branched basally, often purple-dotted and purple-streaked, 10 cm - 1.5 m long, thin, round in cross-section, rooting from lower nodes. Spikelets: on 0.5 - 10 mm long stalks, 1.5 - 2 mm long, about 1 mm wide, ellipsoid or reverse egg-shaped with a blunt or nearly pointed apex, lightly veined. Glumes: unequal, herbaceous. Lower glumes about 0.5 mm long, under one-fifth as long as spikelets, pointed at the apex. Upper glumes nearly equal to lower lemmas, five-veined, warty. Lemmas:: Lower lemmas similar to and nearly equal to upper glumes, five-veined, warty. Upper lemmas shiny, with rolled-up margins on the upper surface. Paleas:: Lower paleas absent. Upper paleas longitudinally lined. Florets:: Lower florets sterile. Upper florets bisexual, grayish brown, 1.5 - 2 mm long, about 1 mm wide, pointed at the apex, longitudinally wrinkled, minutely bumpy. Anthers three. Stigmas red.
Similar species: No information at this time.
Flowering: August to late September
Habitat and ecology: Rare in the Chicago Region, and confined to northwestern Indiana. It is typically found in moist sandy soil.
Occurence in the Chicago region: native
Etymology: Panicum comes from the Latin word panis, meaning bread, or panus, meaning "ear of millet." Verrucosum means warty.
Annual 2-9 dm; culms very slender, solitary or tufted, erect or spreading; blades thin, 5-15 cm נ5-10 mm, narrowed to the base, glabrous; panicle very lax and diffuse, 5-20 cm, its very slender branches widely spreading; spikelets narrowly obovoid, acute, 1.7-2.1 mm; first glume triangular, 0.5-0.8 mm; second glume and sterile lemma obscurely veined, distinctly verrucose; 2n=36. Wet woods and shores; e. Mass. to Fla. and Tex., mostly on the coastal plain, and also inland in Tenn., Ky., O., ne. Ind., and sw. Mich.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.