Flora of North America species comparison

2-4 m, usually 2-4 times as long as the panicles.

usually solid, rarely hollow.

primarily basal;

sheaths mostly glabrous, with a dense tuft of hairs at the collars;

ligules 1-2 mm;

blades to 2 m long, 3-8 cm wide, mostly flat, cauline, ascending, arching, bluish-green, abaxial surfaces glabrous basally.

distichous;

sheaths usually open;

abaxial ligules usually absent;

auricles usually absent;

adaxial ligules of hairs or membranous and ciliate;

blades not pseudopetiolate;

mesophyll non-radiate;

adaxial palisade layer absent;

fusoid cells absent;

arm cells absent;

kranz anatomy absent;

midrib simple, usually with 1 vascular bundle (an arc of bundles in Cortaderia);

adaxial bulliform cells present or not;

stomata usually with dome-shaped or parallel-sided subsidiary cells (rarely slightly triangular or high dome-shaped);

bicellular microhairs usually present, distal cell long, narrow;

papillae usually absent.

30-130 cm, only slightly, if at all, elevated above the foliage, whitish or pinkish when young.

ebracteate (subtending leaf somewhat spatheate in Urochlaena Nees), usually paniculate, sometimes racemose or spicate, occasionally a single spikelet;

disarticulation usually above the glumes and between the florets, sometimes below the glumes or in the culms.

15-17 mm;

calluses to 1 mm, with hairs to 2 mm;

lemmas long-attenuate to an awn, awns 2.5-5 mm;

paleas to 4 mm;

stigmas exerted.

bisexual (sometimes with unisexual florets) or unisexual, with 1-7(20) bisexual or pistillate florets, distal florets in the bisexual spikelets often sterile or staminate;

rachilla extension present.

2, usually equal, (1)3-7-veined, usually exceeding the distal florets;

florets laterally compressed;

lemmas firmly membranous to coriaceous, 3-9-veined, rounded across the back, glabrous or with non-uncinate hairs, these sometimes in tufts or fringes, lemma apices shortly to deeply bilobed, lobes often setaceous, midveins often extended as awns, awns usually geniculate, basal segment often flat and twisted;

paleas well-developed, sometimes short relative to the lemmas;

lodicules 2, usually free, usually fleshy, rarely with a membranous apical flap, glabrous or ciliate, often with microhairs, sometimes heavily vascularized;

anthers 3;

ovaries usually glabrous, rarely with apical hairs;

haustorial synergids present, sometimes weakly developed;

styles 2, bases usually widely separated.

and florets not separating easily from the rachilla.

separate from the lemmas and paleas;

hila punctate or long-linear;

embryos large or small relative to the caryopses;

endosperm hard;

starch grains usually compound;

epiblasts absent;

scutellar cleft present;

mesocotyl internode elongated;

embryonic leaf margins usually meeting, sometimes overlapping, x = 6,7, 9.

= 72.