Family: Poaceae |
Signe Frederiksen Plants annual. Culms 3-40 cm tall, geniculate. Plants annual. Culms 3–40 cm, geniculate. Sheaths open for most of their length; auricles present, often inconspicuous; ligules 0.4–2 mm, membranous, truncate; blades 1–6 mm wide, flat, linear. Inflorescences distichous spikes, 0.8–4.5 cm, with 1 spikelet per node, usually erect when mature; rachis internodes flat, margins glabrous or with hairs, hairs white; middle internodes 0.5–3 mm; disarticulation in the rachises, at the nodes beneath each spikelet, or at the base of each floret. Spikelets 6–25 mm, including the awns, more than 3 times the length of the internodes, divergent, laterally compressed, with 2–5 bisexual florets, sterile florets distal or absent. Glumes equal, 4–19 mm, including the awns, coriaceous, becoming indurate, 1-keeled initially, sometimes 2-keeled at maturity, keels glabrous or hairy, never with tufts of hair, bases slightly connate, apices tapering to a sharp point or straight awn; lemmas 5–24 mm, coriaceous, rounded basally, keeled distally, 5-veined, unawned or shortly awned; paleas usually shorter and thinner than the lemmas, 2-keeled, ciliate or scabrous distally, keels sometimes prolonged into 2 toothlike appendages; anthers 3, 0.4–1.3 mm, yellow. Ovaries pubescent; styles 2, free to the base. x = 7. Haplomes F, Xe. Name from the Greek eremia, ‘desert’, and pyros, ‘wheat’. Eremopyrum includes 5–10 species that grow in steppes and semidesert regions from Turkey to central Asia and Pakistan. Three species have been found in North America; only E. triticeum is widepsread. In their native ranges, species of Eremopyrum are valuable fodder on ephemeral spring pastures. SELECTED REFERENCES Frederiksen, S. 1991. Taxonomic studies in Eremopyrum (Poaceae). Nordic J. Bot. 11:271–285; Melderis, A. 1985. Eremopyrum(Ledeb.) Jaub. & Spach. Pp. 227–231 in P.H. Davis (ed.). Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands, vol. 9. University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland. 724 pp.; Sakamoto, S. 1979. Genetic relationships among four species of the genus Eremopyrum in the tribe Triticeae, Gramineae. Mem. Coll. Agric. Kyoto Univ. 114:1–27. |