Plants perennial; shortly rhizomatous. Culms 40-120 cm, erect; nodes
glabrous or pubescent. Sheaths glabrous or pubescent; ligules 1.5-3.8
mm; blades to 37 cm long, 2-9.3 mm wide, flat, glabrous or pubescent. Panicles
terminal, with 1-6 racemosely arranged branches; branches 2-10.9 cm, diverging
to spreading (rarely erect), persistent; branch axes 0.6-1.3 mm wide, glabrous,
margins scabrous, terminating in a spikelet. Spikelets 2.3-3.3 mm long,
2-2.7 mm wide, solitary, appressed to the branch axes, elliptic to obovate or
nearly orbicular, glabrous, stramineous. Lower glumes absent; upper
glumes 3-veined, lower lemmas 5-veined; upper florets pale to
stramineous. Caryopses about 2 mm, white to yellow-brown. 2n = 20,
58, 70, 80.
Paspalum laeve is restricted to the eastern United States. It grows at
the edges of forests and in disturbed areas.
Culms erect or ascending, 3-8 dm, usually several from one base; sheaths keeled, usually loose, villous to pilose or glabrous; blades 5-25 cm נ3-10 mm, glabrous or pilose; racemes 2-6, spreading, 4-12 cm; spikelets borne singly, glabrous, planoconvex, obovate to elliptic, orbicular, or obovate, 2.4-3.4 mm, two-thirds to fully as wide; glume and sterile lemma 5-veined, the outer veins approximate near the margin; 2n=40, 80. Various habitats; se. Mass. to Pa., O., s. Ind., Mo. and Kans., s. to the Gulf. Abundant and variable. (P. angustifolium; P. circulare; P. longipilum; P. plenipilum)
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.