Italian Millet Grass
Italian Millet (Setaria italica) is a grass that has escaped from cultivation and is not unfrequently found in waste places and by roadsides. It is of stout and rapid growth, and the purplish flowering-heads, as they bend with a load of ripened seed, are often six inches or more in length and more than an inch in thickness.
Millets were among the most ancient of cultivated grains, being planted long ago in China each spring by princes of the royal house. And in lake dwellings of the Stone Age the grain has been found in such quantities that it must be assumed to have yielded the chief bread supply of prehistoric men.