Flora of North America species comparison

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Echinochloa crus-galli

awn barnyard grass, barnyard grass, common barnyard grass, echinochloa pied-de-coq, large barnyard-grass, or large barnyard grass
Habit Plants annual.
Culms

30-200 cm, spreading, decumbent or stiffly erect;

nodes usually glabrous or the lower nodes puberulent.
Sheaths

glabrous;

ligules absent, ligule region sometimes pubescent;

blades to 65 cm long, 5-30 mm wide, usually glabrous, occasionally sparsely hirsute.
Panicles

5-25 cm, with few-many papillose-based hairs at or below the nodes of the primary axes, hairs sometimes longer than the spikelets;

primary branches 1.5-10 cm, erect to spreading, longer branches with short, inconspicuous secondary branches, axes scabrous, sometimes also sparsely hispid, hairs to 5 mm, papillose-based.
Spikelets

2.5-4 mm long, 1.1-2.3 mm wide, disarticulating at maturity.
Caryopses

1.3-2.2 mm long, 1-1.8 mm wide, ovoid or oblong, brownish;

embryos 59-86% as long as the caryopses.
Upper

glumes about as long as the spikelets;

lower florets sterile;

lower lemmas unawned to awned, sometimes varying within a branch, awns to 50 mm;

lower paleas subequal to the lemmas;

upper lemmas broadly ovate to elliptical, coriaceous portion rounded distally, passing abruptly into an early-withering, acuminate, membranous tip that is further demarcated from the coriaceous portion by a line of minute hairs (use 25x magnification);

anthers 0.5-1 mm.
2n

= 54.

Echinochloa crus-galli
Distribution
from USDA
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Echinochloa crus-galli is a Eurasian species that is now widely established in the Flora region, where it grows in moist, disturbed sites, including rice fields. Some North American taxonomists have interpreted E. crus-galli much more widely; others treat it as here, but recognize several infraspecific taxa based on such characters as trichome length and abundance, and awn length. There are several ecological and physiological ecotypes within the species, but the correlation between these and the species' morphological variation has not been established, so no infraspecific taxa are recognized here.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 25, p. 400.
Parent taxa Poaceae > subfam. Panicoideae > tribe Paniceae > Echinochloa
Sibling taxa
E. colona, E. crus-pavonis, E. esculenta, E. frumentacea, E. muricata, E. oplismenoides, E. oryzicola, E. oryzoides, E. paludigena, E. polystachya, E. pyramidalis, E. walteri
Name authority (L.) P. Beauv
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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