Phragmites australis (common reed) ( )

Phragmites communis

Perennial; culms robust, erect, 2-4 m. tall, with stout, creeping rhizomes, these sometimes on the surface forming leafy stolons as much as 9 m. long; blades broad, flat, 2-6 dm. long, the rachilla clothed with long, silky hairs as long as or shorter than the florets, disarticulating above the glumes and at the base of each joint between the florets; lowest floret staminate or neuter; glumes lanceolate, acute, unequal in size, the first glume about 1/2 a long as the upper glume, the second one shorter than the florets; lemmas narrow, long-acuminate, glabrous, 3-nerved, the florets successively smaller; palea much shorter than the lemma. In fresh-water marshes, on banks of streams, and along irrigation ditches: well established in wet places in the Colorado and Mojave deserts, less common and at scattered localities along the coast from San Diego County to Del Norte County, in the delta region, also east of the Sierra Nevada crest from Mon County to Modoc County; cosmopolitan. "A Flora of the Marshes of California. Herbert L. Mason".