Biorepository Data Portal

Culms 20-45 cm, geniculate at the base, usually forming many tillers. Sheaths with hyaline margins, lower cauline sheath margins usually ciliate; blades 6-20 cm long, 3-6 mm wide. Spikes 5.5-8.2 cm long, 0.3-0.6 cm wide, narrowly cylindrical to slightly moniliform, with 6-12 spikelets; rudimentary spikelets absent; disarticulation in the rachises, the spikelets falling attached to the internodes above. Spikelets 7-8 mm long, 3-4 mm wide, cylindrical, scabrous, with 2-5 florets, distal 2 florets sterile. Glumes 5-7 mm, coriaceous, scabrous, rims thickened, apices obtuse to truncate, minutely denticulate, unawned; lemmas 6-8 mm, toothed and usually awned, awns usually solitary, awns of the lower spikelets to 4 cm, awns of the apical spikelets to 5.5 cm. Caryopses 5-6 mm, adhering to the lemmas and paleas. Haplomes D. 2n = 14.

Aegilops tauschii is a weed of disturbed areas. In the Flora region, it is known only from Riverside County, California, Cochise County, Arizona, and an old collection from Westchester County, New York. It is native from the Caucasus and southern shores of the Caspian Sea, eastward to Kazakhstan and western China, and southward to Iraq and northwestern India.