Wood Small-reed - Calamagrostis epigejos

A stout, tall plant (60 to 200 cm), its leaves up to 10 mm wide, flat, rough, long-pointed and hairless, with long (to 12 mm), membranous, jagged tipped ligules. Panicles are dense, purplish brown, 15 to 30 cm long. Lemmas awned, with a large basal tuft of hairs longer than lemma

Calamagrostis canescens - Purple Small-reed - a rare woodland plant in VC55 - with hairy not rough leaf uppersides, shorter ligules and shorter basal hair-tuft to lemmas

Tall plant, with conspicuous long hair tuft at base of lemma; rough upper-sides to leaves

Damp open woodland and heath grassland - but also brownfield and waste ground 

Flowers July and August.

Perennial.

Local frequent in southern and eastern England, more scattered elsewhere and scarce in Scotland.

Very local in Leicestershire and Rutland, but may be fairly frequent in the areas where it occurs. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 56 of the 617 tetrads.