Flora of North America species comparison

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Aristida purpurea var. wrightii
Photo is of parent taxon

Wright three-awn, Wright's threeawn
Culms

45-100 cm.
Blades

10-25 cm, involute or flat.
Panicles

(12)14-30 cm;

primary branches usually erect, without axillary pulvini, stiff, straight, lower nodes associated with 2-10 spikelets.
Glumes

tan to brown, fading to stramineous.
Lower glumes

5-10 mm;

upper glumes 9-16 mm;

lemmas 8-14 mm long, narrowing to 0.2-0.3 mm wide;

awns (8)20-35 mm long, 0.2-0.3 mm wide at the base, lateral awns usually subequal to the central awn, rarely 1-3 mm.
2n

= 22, 44, 66.

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

Aristida purpurea var. wrightii grows on sandy to gravelly hills and flats from the southwestern United States to southern Mexico. It is the most robust variety of A. purpurea, and has dark, stout awns and long panicles. It may be confused with var. nealleyi, which has narrower lemmas and awns and a light-colored panicle, but it also intergrades with var. purpurea and var. parishii. Aristida purpurea forma brownii (Warnock) Allred & Valdes-Reyna refers to plants with short central awns and lateral awns that are only 1-3 mm long.

(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. purpurea
Synonyms A. wrightii
Name authority (Nash) Allred
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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