Grass Description
Areas with shallow water, wet meadows, grasslands, and along stream banks.
General Description
Redtop can be distinguished from other bent grasses by its colorful purplish-red seedhead. Other bent grasses have a seedhead that is green or gray and their leaf blades are narrower.
Rhizomes; seedhead stem 8 to 47 inches tall; seedhead 3 to 11 inches long, less than 1/2 the length of the seedhead stem, open at flowering otherwise contracted. One-flowered spikelets. Ligules of the upper leaves less than 1/4 inch long.
Flower Characteristics
Loose panicles, taller than wide, 3 to 11 inches long, egg-shaped to pyramidal. Spikelets are typically purplish red, somewhat flattened, lance-shaped tapering to a pointed tip, with a single floret and a short, straight, rough-textured stalk.
Vegetative Characteristics
Leaves are alternate, 2 to 8 inches long, up to 1/3 inch wide, flat, hairless and mostly smooth on both surfaces.
Cattle prefer nearly all other cultivated grasses to redtop. It is commonly used for erosion control in plantings along riparian zones and wetlands.