20 to 50 cm tall, tufted with creeping rhizomes but no leafy stolons. Panicle is purplish brown and always spreading, with whorled branches.

Creeping Bent (Agrostis stolonifera) and Black Bent (Agrostis gigantea)

The panicle is branched. Each spikelet contains only one floret usually completely enclosed by its glumes. The inflorescence is very open with widely spaced spikelets which are not awned. The tiller ligule is shorter than wide - i.e. on the non-flowering shoot.

Look at the tiller ligules, not those on a flowering stem.  Photograph whole plant in flower and detail of tiller ligules if possible

Drier and more acid grassland.

June to August.

Perennial.

Quite a common grass throughout Britain.

Quite common in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 388 of the 617 tetrads.