From the sandy soils of East Texas to Florida and north to Virginia, Alabama and Arkansas, carpetgrass is found in fields, woods, along roadsides, pastures and lawns. It is a creeping, perennial grass that can be recognized by the blunt rounded tips of its leaves, flat stolons and a tall seedstalk with two branches at the apex. It forms a dense mat and will crowd out most other species.
Stolons are flat, widely branched and root at each node.
Leaf sheaths are strongly compressed with fine hairs along the outer margin and densely pubescent around the nodes. The ligule is very short with a fringe of short hairs. The leaf blade is wide, flat, broadly rounded at the base, blunt at the tip and often fringed with hairs. The seedstalk is tall, slender and often drooping. It branches at the apex into two slender, one-sided spikes, sometimes with a third spike below.