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guleaf barnyard-grass, gulf barnyard grass, gulf cockspur grass

Habit Plants annual or short-lived perennials. Plants annual or perennial; synoecious, monoecious, or dioecious; primarily herbaceous, habit varied.
Culms

30-150 cm;

nodes glabrous.

annual, usually solid, sometimes somewhat woody, sometimes decumbent, often branched above the base.

Sheaths

glabrous, often purplish;

ligules absent;

blades 12-60 cm long, 10-25 mm wide, glabrous.

Leaves

distichous;

sheaths usually open;

auricles usually absent;

abaxial ligules usually absent, occasionally present as a line of hairs;

adaxial ligules membranous, sometimes also ciliate, or of hairs, sometimes absent;

blades sometimes pseudopetiolate;

mesophyll radiate or non-radiate;

adaxial palisade layer absent;

fusoid cells usually absent;

arm cells usually absent;

kranz anatomy absent or present;

midribs usually simple, rarely complex;

adaxial bulliform cells present;

stomata with triangular or dome-shaped subsidiary cells;

bicellular microhairs usually present, with a long, narrow distal cell;

papillae absent or present.

Panicles

10-30 cm, erect or drooping, nodes sparsely hispid, hairs papillose-based, internodes glabrous;

primary branches to 14 cm, nodes sometimes sparsely hispid, hairs papillose-based, internodes usually glabrous;

secondary branches to 3 cm.

Inflorescences

ebracteate (Paniceae) or bracteate (most Andropogoneae) panicles, racemes, spikes, or complex arrangements of rames (in the Andropogoneae), usually bisexual, sometimes unisexual;

disarticulation usually below the glumes, frequently in the secondary and higher order axes of the inflorescences.

Spikelets

2.5-3.4 mm long, 1.2-1.4 mm wide, disarticulating at maturity.

bisexual or unisexual, frequently paired or in triplets, the members of each unit usually with pedicels of different lengths or 1 spikelet sessile.

Glumes

usually 2, equal or unequal, shorter or longer than the adjacent florets, sometimes exceeding the distal florets;

florets 2(-4), usually dorsally compressed, sometimes terete or laterally compressed;

lower florets sterile or staminate, frequently reduced to a lemma;

upper florets usually bisexual;

lemmas hyaline to coriaceous, lacking uncinate hairs, often terminally awned;

awns single;

paleas of bisexual florets well-developed, reduced, or absent;

lodicules usually 2, sometimes absent, cuneate, free, fleshy, usually glabrous;

anthers 1-3;

ovaries usually glabrous;

haustorial synergids absent;

style branches 2, free and close or fused at the base.

Caryopses

1.2-1.5 mm long, 1-1.3 mm wide;

embryos 50-70% as long as the caryopses.

hila usually punctate;

endosperm hard, without lipid;

starch grains simple;

embryos large in relation to the caryopses, usually waisted;

epiblasts usually absent;

scutellar cleft present;

mesocotyl internode elongated;

embryonic leaf margins usually overlapping, rarely just meeting, x = 5, (7), 9, 10, (12), (14).

Upper

glumes subequal to the spikelets;

lower florets sterile;

lower lemmas unawned or awned, awns 3-10(15) mm, curved;

lower paleas absent, vestigial, or well-developed;

upper lemmas narrowly elliptic, not or scarcely exceeding the upper glumes, acute or obtuse, with a well-differentiated, early-withering tip, glabrous or pubescent at the base of the tip, hairs not forming a line across the base;

anthers 0.5-0.7 mm.

2n

= 36.

Echinochloa crus-pavonis

Poaceae subfam. panicoideae

Distribution
from FNA
AL; AR; AZ; CA; CO; FL; KS; LA; MD; MO; MS; NM; NV; OK; OR; TX; UT; PR
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Echinochloa crus-pavonis is a native species found in scattered locations from British Columbia to Arizona, east to Florida, and south into South America. It favors marshes and wet places at lower elevations, often being found in the water.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

The subfamily Panicoideae is most abundant in tropical and subtropical regions, particularly mesic portions of such regions, but several species grow in temperate regions of the world. Within the Flora region, the Panicoideae are represented by 59 genera and 364 species. They are most abundant in the eastern United States (Barkworth and Capels 2000). Photosynthesis may be either C3 or C4. All three pathways are found in the subfamily, but the PCK and NAD-ME variants appear to have evolved only once, while the NADP-ME pathways seems to have evolved several different times (Giussani et al. 2001).

The Panicoideae were first recognized as a distinct unit by Brown (1814), earlier than any of the other subfamilial taxa of the Poaceae. Its early recognition is undoubtedly attributable to its distinctive spikelets. Recognition of the tribe Gynerieae is recent (Sanchez-Ken and Clark 2001) and its placement in the Panicoideae, rather than the Centothecoideae, should be regarded as tentative.

Spikelets with two florets are found in many other subfamilies, but rarely do they follow the pattern of the lower floret being sterile or staminate and the upper floret bisexual. Development of unisexual florets within the Panicoideae appears to be consistent across the subfamily (LeRoux and Kellogg 1999), but differs from that in the Ehrhartoideae (Zaitcheck et al. 2000).

The Paniceae and Andropogoneae have their conventional interpretation in this Flora, so far as the North American taxa are concerned. Molecular studies, however, while strongly supporting the monophyly of the Andropogoneae, show the Paniceae to be paraphyletic, with two distinct clades. In one of these clades, most taxa have a chromosome base number of x = 9, but some have x = 10, and the taxa are pan-tropical in origin. The taxa in the other clade, with one exception, have a chromosome base number of x = 10 and are American in origin. This latter clade is sister to the Andropogoneae, which also have a chromosome base number of x = 10 (Gomez-Martinez and Culham 2000; Giussanni et al. 2001; Barber et al. 2002).

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

Key
1. Lower paleas more than 1/2 as long as the lemmas; panicles usually drooping
E. crus var. crus-pavonis
1. Lower paleas absent or much less than 1/2 as long as the lemmas; panicles usually stiffly erect
E. crus var. macera
1. Blades of leaves on the lower 1/2 of the culms disarticulating from the sheaths; plants 2-15 m tall, unisexual, without axillary inflorescences; blades with midribs 5-15 mm wide
Gynerieae
1. Blades of most or all cauline leaves remaining attached to the sheaths; plants 0.05-6 m tall, usually bisexual, sometimes with unisexual inflorescences, often with axillary inflorescences; blades with midribs 0.2-5 mm wide.
→ 2
2. Glumes usually conspicuously unequal; lower glumes usually greatly exceeded by the upper florets; upper glumes from subequal to longer than the distal florets; lemmas of the upper florets usually coriaceous to indurate; disarticulation usually beneath the glumes, not in the axes of the inflorescence branches
Paniceae
2. Glumes usually subequal, usually exceeding and concealing the florets; lemmas of the upper florets hyaline to membranous; disarticulation frequently in the axes of the inflorescence branches
Andropogoneae
Source FNA vol. 25, p. 398. FNA vol. 25, p. 351. Author: Grass Phylogeny Working Group;.
Parent taxa Poaceae > subfam. Panicoideae > tribe Paniceae > Echinochloa Poaceae
Sibling taxa
E. colona, E. crus-galli, E. esculenta, E. frumentacea, E. muricata, E. oplismenoides, E. oryzicola, E. oryzoides, E. paludigena, E. polystachya, E. pyramidalis, E. walteri
Subordinate taxa
E. crus var. crus-pavonis, E. crus var. macera
Andropogoneae, Gynerieae, Paniceae
Name authority unknown Link
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