Plants annual or perennial. Culms 10-70 cm. Sheaths open, glabrous, usually longer than the internodes; ligules membranous or hyaline, truncate to obtuse, often decurrent; blades flat to involute, abaxial surfaces glabrous, sometimes scabrous, adaxial surfaces shortly pubescent. Inflorescences terminal, panicles, exceeding the leaves; branches spreading to ascending; pedicels capillary, lax, minutely glandular just below the spikelets. Spikelets with 1 floret, slightly laterally compressed, grayish-green; disarticulation above the glumes. Glumes subequal, ovate to obtuse, faintly 1-veined, glabrous; lemmas slightly longer and firmer than the glumes, 3-veined, veins and margins densely sericeous, hairs 0.1-0.7(1) mm, apices acute to obtuse, occasionally mucronate; paleas 2-veined, densely villous between the veins; anthers 3, purplish. x = 8. Name from the Greek blepharis, eyelash, and neuron, nerve, a reference to the sericeous veins of the lemmas.

Blepharoneuron is a genus of two species: a slender annual, B. shepherdii (Vasey) P.M. Peterson & Annable, which is known only from northern Mexico, and B. tricholepis, which is native to the Flora region.

1.   Blepharoneuron tricholepis (Torr.) Nash
Hairy Dropseed

Plants perennial; densely cespitose. Culms 10-70 cm, erect, glabrous and smooth or scabrous just below the nodes. Ligules (0.3)0.7-2(2.7) mm, hyaline to membranous, entire; blades 1-15 cm long, 0.6-2.5 mm wide, scabrous. Panicles 3-25 cm long, 1-10 cm wide; branches ascending; pedicels 2-9 mm, straight or flexuous. Glumes (1.5)1.8-2.6(3) mm, often appearing 3-veined because of the characteristic infolding of the margins; lemmas (2)2.3-3.5(3.9) mm; anthers 1.2-2.1 mm, brownish. Caryopses 1.2-1.4 mm. 2n = 16.

Blepharoneuron tricholepis grows in dry, rocky to sandy slopes, dry meadows, and open woods in pine-oak-madrone forests from Utah and Colorado to the state of Puebla, Mexico, at elevations of 700-3660 m. It flowers from mid-June through November.