58 GRAMINEAE (GRASS FAMILY) 
common Chess, for if allowed to have its way, it may become as 
pernicious as that weed. 
DOWNY BROME-GRASS 
Bromus tectorum, L. 
Other English names: Slender Chess, Early Chess. 
Introduced. Annual or winter annual. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: May to July. 
Seed-time: June to August. 
Range: Massachusetts to Indiana, Colorado, Washington, Virginia, 
and Mississippi. 
Habitat: Fields and waste places. 
The range of this weed has greatly 
increased of late years. Its early 
season makes it very objectionable, 
as its seeds foul the ground before 
any grain is ripe; the stems also 
become rough and innutritious very 
early in the season, so that it is a 
damage in hay fields as well as 
among grain. (Fig. 28.) 
Culms one to two feet tall, tufted, 
erect, and very slender. Sheaths 
and blades softly downy, the latter 
flat, three to six inches long. The 
whole plant seems slim and weak, 
the panicle one-sided, like oats, its 
branches slender and thread-like, the 
spikelets pendulous; these are nu- 
merous, small, the glumes narrow, 
rough-hairy; awn straight, longer 
than the lemma. 
Means of control 
Prevent seed production — which 
Fic. 28.— Downy Brome-grass Means that the grass must be either 
(Bromus tectorum). X }. cut or pulled as early as May. 
