Family: Poaceae |
David M. Brandenburg Plants perennial; cespitose, sometimes rhizomatous. Culms 20-203 cm, solitary or clustered, often rooting at the lower nodes, usually glabrous. Sheaths open, glabrous; auricles absent; ligules scarious; blades flat, margins scabrous, surfaces scabrous or smooth. Inflorescences panicles; branches spreading to ascending; disarticulation below the glumes. Pedicels slightly flared, scabrous to smooth. Spikelets laterally compressed, with 1(2) floret(s); rachillas usually prolonged beyond the florets as a minute stub or bristle, smooth or scabridulous. Glumes from slightly shorter than to slightly longer than the florets, 1-or 3-veined, margins hyaline, keels scabrous, apices acute, sometimes minutely awn-tipped; lower glumes from somewhat shorter than to equaling the upper glumes; florets sessile or stipitate; calluses blunt, glabrous; lemmas 3- or 5-veined, veins often obscure, apices acute, minutely bifid, usually with a short, subterminal awn; paleas 3/4 to nearly as long as the lemmas, 1-veined or with 2 closely spaced veins; anthers 1 or 2. Caryopses often beaked. x = 7. Name of uncertain origin. SELECTED REFERENCES Brandenburg, D.M., W.H. Blackwell, and J.W. Thieret. 1991. Revision of the genus Cinna (Poaceae). Sida 14:581-596; Brandenburg, D.M.and J.R. Estes. 1991. One-nerved paleas in Cinna arundinacea L. (Poaceae). Trans. Kentucky Acad. Sci. 52:94-96; Brandenburg, D.M. and J.W. Thieret. 2000. Cinnaand Limnodea (Poaceae): Not congeneric. Sida 19:195-200; Tucker, G.C. 1996. The genera of Pooideae (Gramineae) in the southeastern United States. Harvard Papers Bot. 9:11-90. |