Flower:

Open, loose, branching cluster at the top of the stem, pyramidal in outline, 4 to 8 inches long, with usually 2 or 3 branches per node. Branches are up to 2½ inches long, spreading to drooping, with 2 or more spikelets (flower clusters) per branch. Spikelets are stalked, lance-elliptic in outline, 3 to 4 mm (to 1/6 inch) long, light green at flowering time and have a single floret.

At the base of a spikelet is a pair of bracts (glumes), both about equal in size and shape, hairless but slightly rough-textured from minute teeth, 3-veined, 3 to 4 mm long, egg-shaped with a blunt to pointed tip. Florets are surrounded by a pair of bracts (lemma and palea), both shiny, firmer than the glumes, pointed at the tip and as long as the glumes, the lemma 5-veined and rolled under along the edges, covering the edges of the palea.

Leaves and stems:

Leaves are 4 to 12 inches long, 5 to 15 mm (to ~½ inch) wide, spreading to ascending, flat, rough textured along the edges and sometimes along the veins.

The sheath is hairless, smooth to slightly rough. The ligule (membrane where the leaf joins the sheath) is 3 to 10 mm long, ragged or toothed along the top edge and lacks a fringe of hairs. Nodes are smooth. Stems are hairless, smooth to slightly rough, unbranched, erect or prostrate from the base then rising near the tip (decumbent), single or multiple from the base, forming loose clumps and may form loose colonies.

Fruit:

The glumes become pale brown as grains mature, lemma and palea turning darker brown. Florets drop off individually leaving the glumes behind on the stalk. Grains (seeds) are elliptic, 2 to 3 mm long.

Notes:

Wood Millet is an occasional to common grass in deciduous and mixed forests in about half of Minnesota. It is tall and elegant with its loose, droopy panicle, distinguished by the awnless, single-flowered spikelets 3 to 4 mm long with a lemma and palea that are shiny brown at maturity, flat leaves up to 15 mm (½ inch) wide, ligule up to 10 mm long (upper ligules often about 5 mm), hairless overall and forming loose clumps with 1 to a few flowering stems. Milium effusum is a circumpolar species with two varieties: var. effusum is the European native not known to be in North America; var. cisatlanticum is the North American counterpart. A cultivar with yellow foliage, M. effusum 'Aureum', is widely available in the garden trade but the straight species is just as attractive.