Family: Poaceae |
Jerrold I. Davis Plants perennial; rhizomatous. Culms 18-145 cm, erect to decumbent, often rooting at the nodes; internodes hollow. Sheaths open to the base; auricles absent; ligules membranous; blades flat. Inflorescences terminal panicles; branches scabrous, usually densely scabrid distally. Spikeletspedicellate, laterally compressed to terete; florets 2-8; disarticulation above the glumes and between the florets. Glumes unequal, shorter than the lowest lemma, rounded to weakly keeled, veins obscure to prominent, unawned; lower glumes 1(3)-veined; upper glumes (1)3(5)-veined; callusesblunt, glabrous; lemmas rounded to weakly keeled, sometimes pubescent, particularly below, prominently (5)7-9-veined, veins more or less parallel, veins and interveins usually scabridulous, particularly distally, lateral veins usually reduced or absent, apices scabridulous and entire to serrate-erose, unawned; paleassubequal to the lemmas, 2-veined; lodicules 2, free, glabrous, entire or toothed; anthers usually 3; ovaries usually hairy, sometimes glabrous. Caryopses oblong, flattened dorsally, falling free; hila oblong, about 1/3 the length of the caryopses. x = 7. Named for John Torrey (1796-1873), an American botanist. SELECTED REFERENCES Church, G.L. 1952. The genus Torreyochloa. Rhodora 54:197-200; Koyama, T. and S. Kawano. 1964. Critical taxa of grasses with North American and eastern Asiatic distribution. Canad. J. Bot. 42:859-884; Soreng, R.J., J.I. Davis, and J.J. Doyle. 1990 A phylogenetic analysis of chloroplast DNA restriction site variation in the Poaceae subfam. Pooideae. Pl. Syst. Evol. 172:83-97. |