Family: Poaceae |
Sandy Long Plants annual or perennial; sometimes rhizomatous. Culms 1.5-150 cm, erect. Cauline leaves 1-3; sheaths open to the base; auricles absent; ligulestruncate, entire, erose, or ciliolate; blades flat. Inflorescences terminal panicles, panicles condensed, often spikelike, linear to almost globose, more or less unilateral. Spikelets subsessile to shortly pedicellate, laterally compressed, dimorphic, usually paired, distal spikelet on each branch sometimes solitary, proximal spikelet of each pair sterile, almost completely concealing the fertile spikelet; disarticulation above the glumes and beneath the florets. Sterile spikelets persistent; florets 6-18, reduced to narrow, linear-lanceolate lemmas, sometimes awned, awns terminal; glumes narrow, linear. Fertile spikelets adaxial to the sterile spikelets; florets 1-5; rachillas glabrous, extending beyond the distal floret; glumes 2, subequal and shorter than the spikelets, thin, lanceolate, 1-veined, acute, sometimes awned; calluses short, blunt, glabrous; lemmas glabrous or pubescent, 5-veined, acute or bidentate, unawned to conspicuously awned; paleas about as long as the lemmas, bifid; lodicules 2, free, glabrous, ovate, bilobed; anthers 3; ovariesbroadly ellipsoid, glabrous; styles separate. Caryopses oblong-ellipsoid, subterete, slightly dorsally compressed, sometimes adherent to the paleas; hila1/5-1/2 as long as the grain, oblong to linear. x = 7. Name from the Greek, kynos, dog, and oura, tail, referring to the shape of the panicle. SELECTED REFERENCES Ennos, R.A.1985. The mating system and genetic structure in a perennial grass, Cynosurus cristatus L. Heredity 55:121-126; Jirásek, V. and J. Chrtek. 1964. Zur frage des taxonomischen Wertes der Gattung CynosurusL. Novit. Bot. Delect. Seminum Horti Bot. Univ. Carol. Prag. 20:23-27; Lodge, R.W. 1959. Biological flora of the British Isles: Cynosurus cristatus L. J. Ecol. 47:511-518. |