Elymus canadensis |
Elymus ×saundersii |
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Canada wild rye, Canadian wild rye, Great Plains wild-rye, élyme du Canada |
saunder's wildrye |
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Habit | Plants loosely cespitose, rarely with rhizomes to 4 cm long and 1-2 mm thick, often glaucous. | Plants cespitose, not rhizomatous. | ||||||||
Culms | (40)60-150(180) cm, erect or decumbent; nodes 4-10, mostly concealed by the leaf sheaths, glabrous. |
50-80 cm, erect, glabrous or pilose. |
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Leaves | evenly distributed; sheaths smooth or scabridulous, glabrous or hirsute, often reddish brown; auricles 1.5-4 mm, brown or purplish black; ligules to 1(2) mm, truncate, ciliolate; blades (3)4-15(20) mm wide, usually firm, often ascending and somewhat involute, usually dull green, drying to grayish, adaxial surfaces usually smooth or scabridulous and glabrous, rarely sparsely hispid to villous. |
somewhat basally concentrated; sheaths retrorsely hairy; auricles to 1 mm; ligules 0.5-1 mm; blades 10-15 cm long, 4-5 mm wide, flat, becoming involute when dry, tapering to the apices. |
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Spikes | 6-30 cm long, 3-7 cm wide, usually nodding, sometimes pendent or almost erect, usually with 2(3) spikelets per node, occasionally to 5 at some nodes, rarely with 1 at some nodes but never throughout; internodes (2)3-5(7) mm long, or 5-10 mm long towards the base, 0.2-0.35 mm thick at the thinnest sections, glabrous or with a few hairs below the spikelets. |
10-25 cm long, 1-2.5 cm wide, with 1 spikelet per node; internodes 4-5 mm; disarticulation at the rachis nodes. |
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Spikelets | 12-20 mm excluding the awns, more or less divergent, with (2)3-5(7) florets, lowest florets functional; disarticulation usually above the glumes and beneath each floret, rarely also below the glumes. |
10-25 mm excluding the awns, with 3-6 florets. |
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Glumes | usually equal, occasionally subequal, 11-40 mm including the awns, the basal 0-1 mm subterete and slightly indurate, glume bodies 6-13 mm long, 0.5-1.6 mm wide, linear-lanceolate to subsetaceous, entire, widening or parallel-sided above the base, 3-5-veined, glabrous to scabrous-ciliate, rarely villous on the veins, margins firm, awns (5)10-25(27) mm, straight to outcurving; lemmas 8-15 mm, glabrous, scabrous, hispid, or uniformly villous with the hairs generally appressed, awns (10)15-40(50) mm, moderately to strongly outcurving, often contorted at the spike bases; paleas 7-13 mm, acute, usually bidentate; anthers 2-3.5 mm. |
6-8 mm, linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, 3-5-veined, veins scabrous, apices sometimes toothed, awned, awns 8-13 mm; lemmas 10-13 mm, glabrous, smooth proximally, scabrous distally, awned, awns 20-45 mm, outcurving; anthers 1.5-2 mm, usually indehiscent. |
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Anthesis | May to July. |
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2n | = 28, rarely 42. |
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Elymus canadensis |
Elymus ×saundersii |
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Distribution |
AR; AZ; CA; CO; CT; DC; DE; IA; ID; IL; IN; KS; KY; MA; MD; ME; MI; MN; MO; 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; AB; BC; MB; NB; NT; ON; QC; SK
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AZ; CA; CO; ID; MT; NM; NV; UT; WY |
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Discussion | Elymus canadensis grows on dry to moist or damp, often sandy or gravelly soil on prairies, dunes, stream banks, ditches, roadsides, and disturbed ground, or, especially to the south, in thickets and open woods near streams. It is widespread in most of temperate North America, extending from the southwestern Northwest Territories to Coahuila, Mexico, being especially common in the Great Plains. Reports from California and the southeastern states appear to be based on misidentifications. E. canadensis is considered a good forage species. Elymus canadensis is sometimes confused with E. riparius (see previous), from which it differs in having curved rather than straight awns; and with E. wiegandii (p. 305), from which it differs in its less robust habit and narrower leaves. It can hybridize with E. glabriflorus (p. 296), E. virginicus (p. 298), E. hystrix (p. 316) and allies, E. glaucus (p. 306), E. trachycaulus (p. 321), Pseudoroegneria spicata (p. 281), and other species. Subsequent introgression may have contributed to much of the diversity within the genus (Pohl 1959; Brown and Pratt 1960; Nelson and Tyrl 1978; Davies 1980; Campbell 2002). The three varieties recognized here show clear differences in their typical expression and evidence some geographic separation, but they may prove to be artificial reference points within a more or less continuous variation (Sanders et al. 1979). Nevertheless, crossing barriers sometimes exist between the varieties, and even between some sympatric strains (Church 1954, 1958, 1967a). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Elymus ×saundersii comprises hybrids between E. trachycaulus (p. 321) and E. elymoides (p. 318). Such hybrids are found throughout much of the western portion of the contiguous United States, mostly in disturbed areas. The hybrids are generally sterile and, as in all hybrids involving E. elymoides or E. multisetus (p. 318), the rachises disarticulate at maturity. Elymus ×saundersii is an Elymus named hybrid Elymus is notorious for its ability to hybridize. Most of its interspecific hybrids are partially fertile, permitting introgression between the parents. The descriptions provided below are restricted to the named interspecific hybrids. They should be treated with caution and some skepticism; some are based solely on the type specimen, because little other reliably identified material was available. Moreover, as the descriptions of the non-hybrid species indicate, many other interspecific hybrids exist. The parentage of all hybrids is best determined in the field. Perennial hybrids, such as those in Elymus, can persist in an area after one or both parents have died out, but the simplest assumption is that both are present. Interspecific hybrids of Elymus that have disarticulating rachises presumably have E. elymoides or E. multisetus as one of their parents. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 24, p. 303. | FNA vol. 24, p. 340. | ||||||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Triticeae > Elymus | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Triticeae > Elymus | ||||||||
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Synonyms | E. saundersii | |||||||||
Name authority | L. | Vasey | ||||||||
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