Family: Poaceae |
Mary E. Barkworth and Hester L. Bell Plants perennial; usually unisexual, occasionally bisexual; strongly rhizomatous and/or stoloniferous. Culms to 60 cm, usually erect, glabrous. Leaves conspicuously distichous; lower leaves reduced to scalelike sheaths; upper leaf sheaths strongly overlapping; ligules shorter than 1 mm, membranous, serrate; upper blades stiff, glabrous, ascending to spreading, usually equaling or exceeding the pistillate panicles. Inflorescencesterminal, contracted panicles or racemes, sometimes exceeding the upper leaves. Spikelets laterally compressed, with 2-20 florets; disarticulation of the pistillate spikelets above the glumes and below the florets, staminate spikelets not disarticulating. Glumes 3-7-veined; lemmas coriaceous, staminate lemmas thinner than the pistillate lemmas, 9-11-veined, unawned; paleas 2-keeled, keels narrowly to broadly winged, serrate to toothed, sometimes with excurrent veins; anthers 3. Caryopses glabrous, free from the palea at maturity, brown. x = 10. Name from the Greek distichos, two-rowed, referring to the conspicuously distichous blades. SELECTED REFERENCES Beetle, A.A. 1943. The North American variations of Distichlis spicata. Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 70:638-650; Bell, H.L. and J.T. Columbus. 2008. Proposal for an expanded Distichlis (Poaceae, Chloridoideae): support from molecular, morphological, and anatomical characters. Systematic Botany 33(3): 536-55; Harrington, J., S. Reid, W. Black, and M. Brick. 2009. Was Rydberg Right? Evidence for Distichlis stricta as a species distinct from D. spicata. Abstract for Botany 2009; López Soto, M.M, S.D. Koch, M. Flores-Cruz, and E. M. Engleman. 2009. Anatomía comparada de la lamina foliar del género Distichlis (Poaceae). Acta Botanica Mexicana 89:1-23. Villamil, C.B. 1969. El género Monanthochloë (Gramineae). Estudios morfológicos y taxonómicos con especial referencia a la especie Argentina. Kurtziana 5:369-391. |