Family: Poaceae |
John R. Reeder Plants annual; viscid-aromatic, pilose, sometimes sparsely so, producing long, juvenile, floating basal leaves. Culms 3-35 cm, erect, ascending, or decumbent, sometimes becoming prostrate, not breaking apart at the nodes, usually branching only at the lower nodes. Leaves without ligules, sometimes with a "collar" line visible at the junction of the sheath and blade, especially when dry; blades flat or becoming involute in drying.Inflorescences terminal, clavate to capitate spikes, exserted at maturity, spikelets distichously arranged; disarticulation tardy, above the glumes and between the florets. Spikelets laterally compressed, with 4-40 florets. Glumes irregularly 2-5-toothed; lemmas deeply cleft and strongly 5-veined, veins terminating in prominent mucronate or awn-tipped teeth 1/3-1/2 or more as long as the lemma bodies, each tooth with an additional weaker vein on either side of a strong central vein, these extending about halfway to the base of the lemma; paleas well-developed, 2-veined; lodicules absent;anthers 3, white or pinkish, exserted on long, slender, ribbonlike filaments at anthesis; styles 2, apical, elongate, filiform, stigmatic for 1/3-1/2 of their length; stigmatic hairs short, often sparse. Caryopses slightly compressed laterally, oblong to elliptic; embryos 3/4 as long as to equaling the caryopses; epiblast absent. x = 10, probably. Named for Charles Russell Orcutt (1864-1929), a California botanist. SELECTED REFERENCE Boykin, L.M., W.T Pockman, and T.K. Lowrey. 2008. Leaf anatomy of Orcuttieae (Poaceae: Chloridoideae): more evidence of C4 photosynthesis withou Kranz anatomy. Madrono 55: 143- 150. |