Echinochloa colona |
Echinochloa |
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awnless barnyard grass, jungle rice, jungle ricegrass, or jungle-rice, small barnyard grass, watergrass |
barnyard-grass, cockspur grass |
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Habit | Plants annual; erect or decumbent, cespitose or spreading, rooting from the lower cauline nodes. | Plants annual or perennial; with or without rhizomes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Culms | 10-70 cm; lower nodes glabrous or hispid, hairs appressed; upper nodes glabrous. |
10-460 cm, prostrate, decumbent or erect, distal portions sometimes floating, sometimes rooting at the lower nodes; nodes usually glabrous; internodes hollow or solid. |
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Sheaths | glabrous; ligules absent, ligule region frequently brown-purple; blades 8-22 cm long, 3-6(10) mm wide, mostly glabrous, sometimes hispid, hairs papillose-based on or near the margins. |
open, compressed; auricles absent; ligules usually absent but, if present, of hairs; blades linear to linear-lanceolate, usually more than 10 times longer than wide, flat, with a prominent midrib. |
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Panicles | 2-12 cm, erect, rachises glabrous or sparsely hispid; primary branches 5-10, 0.7-2(4) cm, erect to ascending, spikelike, somewhat distant, without secondary branches, axes glabrous or sparsely hispid, hairs 1.5-2.5 mm, papillose-based. |
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Inflorescences | terminal, panicles of simple or compound spikelike branches attached to elongate rachises, axes not terminating in a bristle, spikelets subsessile, densely packed on the angular branches; disarticulation below the glumes (cultivated taxa not or tardily disarticulating). |
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Spikelets | 2-3 mm, disarticulating at maturity, pubescent to hispid, hairs usually not papillose-based, tips acute to cuspidate. |
plano-convex, with 2(3) florets; lower florets sterile or staminate; upper florets bisexual, dorsally compressed. |
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Glumes | membranous; lower glumes usually 1/4 - 2/5 as long as the spikelets (varying to more than 1/2 as long), unawned to minutely awn-tipped; upper glumes unawned or shortly awned; lower lemmas similar to the upper glumes in length and texture, unawned or awned, awns to 60 mm; lower paleas vestigial to well-developed; upper lemmas coriaceous, dorsally rounded, mostly smooth, apices short or elongate, firm or membranous, unawned; upper paleas free from the lemmas at the apices; lodicules absent or minute; anthers 3. |
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Lower glumes | about 1/2 as long as the spikelets; upper glumes about as long as the spikelets; lower florets usually sterile, occasionally staminate; lower lemmas unawned, similar to the upper glumes; lower paleas subequal to the lemmas; upper lemmas 2.6-2.9 mm, not or scarcely exceeding the upper glumes, elliptic, coriaceous portion rounded distally, passing abruptly into a sharply differentiated, membranous, soon-withering tip; anthers 0.7-0.8 mm. |
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Caryopses | 1.2-1.6 mm, whitish; embryos 63-83% as long as the caryopses. |
ellipsoid, broadly ovoid or spheroid; embryos usually 0.7-0.9 times as long as the caryopses. |
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x | = 9. |
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2n | = 54. |
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Echinochloa colona |
Echinochloa |
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Distribution |
AL; AR; AZ; CA; FL; GA; IL; KS; KY; LA; MA; MD; MO; MS; MT; NC; NJ; NM; OK; OR; PA; SC; TN; TX; VA; VT; WA; HI; PR; Virgin Islands
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AL; AR; AZ; CA; CO; CT; DC; DE; FL; GA; IA; ID; IL; IN; KS; KY; LA; MA; MD; ME; MI; MN; MO; MS; MT; NC; ND; NE; NH; NJ; NM; NV; NY; OH; OK; OR; PA; RI; SC; SD; TN; TX; UT; VA; VT; WA; WI; WV; WY; HI; PR; AB; BC; LB; MB; NB; NS; ON; PE; QC; SK; Virgin Islands |
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Discussion | Echinochloa colona is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions. It is adventive and weedy in North America, growing in low-lying, damp to wet, disturbed areas, including rice fields. The unbranched, rather widely-spaced panicle branches make this one of the easier species of Echinochloa to recognize. Hitchcock (1913) considered that 'colonum' was a non-declining contraction, but dictionaries of Linnaeus' time treated it as a declining adjective. Because Linnaeus was the first to name the species (as "Panicum colonum"), it seems best to follow the practice considered correct in his day; hence "E. colona". (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Echinochloa is a tropical to warm-temperate genus of 40-50 species that are usually associated with wet or damp places. Many of the species are difficult to distinguish because they tend to intergrade. Some of the characters traditionally used for distinguishing taxa, e.g., awn length, are affected by the amount of moisture available; others reflect selection by cultivation, e.g., non-disarticulation in grain taxa, mimicry of rice as weeds of rice fields. There are 13 species in the Flora region: five native and one possibly native, four established, two grown as commercial crops, and one in research. In North America, the most abundant species appears to be the introduced, weedy Echinochloa crus-galli, which closely resembles the native E. muricata. The confusion between the two species has caused them to be treated as the same species. This confusion is probably reflected in the mapping of both E. crus-galli and E. muricata. Echinochloa frumentacea and E. esculenta are grown for grain in India and in China and Japan, respectively, but not in North America. Echinochloa oryzoides and E. oryzicola are weeds whose success and distribution reflects their adaptation to the periodic inundations of commercial rice fields. Cytogenetic data suggest that Echinochloa frumentacea and E. esculenta are domesticated derivatives of E. crus-galli and E. colona, respectively (Yabuno 1962) and that E. oryzoides is very closely related to E. crus-galli (Yabuno 1984). Yabuno (1966) suggested that E. crus-galli is an allohexaploid produced by natural hybridization between the tetraploid E. oryzicola with a not-yet-discovered diploid species of Echinochloa and subsequent chromosome doubling. Studies using seed protein electrophoresis and isozyme analyses (Kim et al. 1989; Gonzalez-Andres et al. 1996; Asins et al. 1999), and molecular studies involving RAPD markers and DNA sequences (Hilu 1994; Roy et al. 2000) or PCR-RFLP techniques (Yasuda et al. 2001), will help in clarifying the phylogenetic problems in Echinochloa, providing that proper attention is paid to the morphological characterization of the plant materials used and that voucher specimens are preserved. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 25, p. 398. | FNA vol. 25, p. 390. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Synonyms | E. colonum | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Name authority | (L.) Link | P. Beauv. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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