It is native to southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

It is becoming well known in North America, where it is an introduced species and a noxious weed of cultivated and disturbed habitat.

[3] It probably spreads when it gets mixed in with grass seed and is transported and inadvertently planted.

[3] This is an annual grass growing 15 to 70 centimeters tall with thin, branching stems that are naked and wiry.

[2][3] The inflorescence is an open panicle with very slender, spreading branches bearing spikelets at their tips.