| Author | (Thunb.) Makino | |
| Distribution | Essentially throughout the state. Gaps in the Mountains and Coastal Plain will likely be filled in the future. Apparently rare in the Sandhills proper soils perhaps too poor.
Native to southeastern Asia. In N.A., from MA to OH and KS, south to northwestern FL and eastern TX. | |
| Abundance | Frequent throughout, and probably common in some counties. As of 2020, this grass is not as aggressive as some aliens and so far does not severely impact natural habitats. | |
| Habitat | Moist to seasonally wet or even seasonally inundated creek margins, bottomlands, meadows, powerlines through these same habitats, roadside ditches, woods roads, maritime shrub thickets, maritime swamp forests. | |
| Phenology | Flowering and fruiting September-November. | |
| Identification | Hairy Jointgrass is a multi-stem, multi-branch, spreading plant whose stems root at nodes. The stems may ultimately grow 3 feet long, or even more. The leaves are ovate or narrowly ovate, taper-pointed, and usually wavy margined. The upper portion of the stem (the final foot or less) turns rather erect and is terminated by a hand-like or fan-shaped inflorescence composed of 12-20 slender divisions. It is superficially similar to the highly invasive Japanese Stilt-grass (Microstegium vimineum), but differs in having many more divisions in the inflorescence and having a hair-like awn projecting from each floret (vs. none). | |
| Taxonomic Comments | Includes var. cryptatherus
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| Other Common Name(s) | | |
| State Rank | SE | |
| Global Rank | GNR | |
| State Status | | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | FAC link |
| USACE-emp | FAC link |
