Flora of North America species comparison

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Aristida purpurea var. purpurea
Photo is of parent taxon

purple three-awn
Culms

26-60 cm.
Blades

3-17 cm, basal and cauline, involute.
Panicles

10-25 cm;

primary branches appressed at the base, without axillary pulvini, capillary, drooping to sinuous distally;

pedicels capillary, usually lax to sinuous.
Lower glumes

4-9 mm;

upper glumes 7-16 mm;

lemmas 6-12 mm long, narrowing to 0.1-0.3 mm wide;

awns subequal, (15)20-60 mm long, 0.1-0.3 mm wide at the base.
2n

= 22, 44, 66, 88.

Aristida purpurea var. purpurea
Distribution
from FNA
AR; AZ; CA; CO; KS; LA; NM; NV; OK; TX; UT
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Aristida purpurea var. purpurea grows in sandy to clay soils, along right of ways, or on dry slopes and mesas. Its range extends from the Flora region to Mexico and Cuba. As treated here, var. purpurea is, admittedly, a broadly defined taxon, incorporating slender plants with small spikelets that used to be referred to A. roemeriana Scheele, but also occasional plants with somewhat flexible branches that are intermediate to var. wrightii and var. nealleyi.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 25, p. 333.
Parent taxa Poaceae > subfam. Aristidoideae > tribe Aristideae > Aristida > Aristida purpurea
Sibling taxa
A. purpurea var. fendleriana, A. purpurea var. longiseta, A. purpurea var. nealleyi, A. purpurea var. parishii, A. purpurea var. perplexa, A. purpurea var. wrightii
Name authority unknown
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



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