Loosely tufted perennial. Culms 8-60 cm high, geniculately ascending or sometimes creeping at the base and rooting from the lower nodes, usually branched below, smooth. Leaf-blades flat, 3-20 cm long, 2-11 mm wide, scabrid on both sides especially towards the tip; ligule 3-7 mm long, blunt becoming lacerate. Panicle lanceolate to narrowly ovate or oblong, ± lobed, 2-18 cm long, dense to very dense. Spikelets 2-3 mm long, breaking up above the persistent glumes; glumes acute or minutely notched, awned from the tip with an awn up to 3 mm long (0.2-0.5 mm in Pakistan), scabrid-hairy; lemma c. 1.5 mm long, truncate-denticulate, awnless or awned from just below the tip with an awn 0.2-3 mm long; palea three-quarters the length of the lemma; anthers 0.5-1 mm long, indehiscent.

Fl. Per. : May-July.

Type locality: British Isles.

Distribution: Pakistan (Punjab, N.W.F.P. & Kashmir); South and West Europe, temperate Asia from Afghanistan to Southern USSR and Northwest India.

The hybrid Agrostis stolonifera x Polypogon monspeliensis is known form damp and saline habitats in South and West Europe. It has not previously been reported from Asia although Tzvelev (l.c.) cites a paper by Kovalevsky who suggested that certain material collected from southern USSR and named as Agrostis subaristata was in fact this hybrid. All of the specimens from Afghanistan (including the type of A. subaristata), Pakistan and India which correspond to A. subaristata are male-sterile, having small indehiscent anthers containing only imperfect pollen. Not one specimen possesses ripe caryopses even though in many cases the florets have begun to break up. This material, however, differs from the European in that the panicle is marginally less dense and the awns of the glumes are generally much shorter. It is probable that different strains of the polymorphic A. stolonifera have been involved in the production of the two versions of the hybrid. Cytotaxonomic investigation of the hybrid in Pakistan is clearly needed.

1700-2300 m.