This diploid (2n = 18) is a cosmopolitan, trampling-resistant weed of fertile soils in tropical and temperate regions. It has probably been present in Ky. since early after settlement; a coll. of P. Peter from Lexington in 1833 was lost in the 1948 fire at KY (Anderson 1924). In 1914 Gm noted: "a grass of dooryards where it thrives about ash heaps and along little use walks... Animals eat it freely... among our best grasses in the matter of nutritive constituents."