Elymus canadensis |
Poaceae subfam. pooideae |
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Canada wild rye, Canadian wild rye, Great Plains wild-rye, élyme du Canada |
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Habit | Plants loosely cespitose, rarely with rhizomes to 4 cm long and 1-2 mm thick, often glaucous. | Plants annual or perennial; sometimes matlike, sometimes cespitose, sometimes stoloniferous, sometimes rhizomatous. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Culms | (40)60-150(180) cm, erect or decumbent; nodes 4-10, mostly concealed by the leaf sheaths, glabrous. |
usually hollow, sometimes solid. |
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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. |
distichous; sheaths usually open to the base, varying to closed for nearly their full length; auricles present or absent; abaxial ligules absent; adaxial ligules scarious or membranous, sometimes puberulent or scabridulous, usually not ciliate, cilia sometimes shorter than the base; pseudopetioles rarely present; blades usually linear, sometimes broadly so, venation parallel; cross sections non-Kranz, mesophyll nonradiate, adaxial palisade layer absent, fusoid and arm cells usually absent; midribs usually simple; adaxial bulliform cells present; stomates with parallel-sided subsidiary cells; epidermes usually lacking bicellular microhairs, sometimes with unicellular microhairs, papillae usually absent, when present, rarely more than 1 per cell. |
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Inflorescences | usually terminal, panicles, spikes, or racemes, usually ebracteate; disarticulation usually below the florets, sometimes below the glumes, at the rachis nodes, or at the inflorescence bases. |
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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. |
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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. |
usually bisexual, infrequently unisexual or mixed, usually laterally compressed or not compressed, occasionally dorsally compressed, with 1-30 sexual florets, distal floret(s) often reduced, infrequently spikelets with 1-2 reduced or staminate basal florets and a single terminal sexual floret. |
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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. |
usually 2, upper or lower glumes sometimes absent, rarely both glumes absent; lemmas without uncinate hairs, awned or not, awns single, basal to apical; paleas usually well-developed, sometimes reduced or absent; lodicules 2(3), usually lanceolate and broadly membranous distally, rarely truncate and fleshy, usually not veined or obscurely veined, sometimes distinctly veined, sometimes ciliate; anthers (1, 2)3; ovaries glabrous or sometimes hairy distally, sometimes with an apical appendage; haustorial synergids absent; styles (1)2 (-4), bases close together, sometimes fused. |
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Caryopses | hila linear, elliptic, ovate, or punctate; endosperm usually hard, sometimes soft or liquid, with or without lipids, starch grains compound or simple; embryos less than 1/2 the length of the caryopses; epiblasts usually present; scutellar cleft usually absent; mesocotyl internode usually absent; embryonic leaf margins overlapping, x = 7, 10. |
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Anthesis | May to July. |
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2n | = 28, rarely 42. |
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Elymus canadensis |
Poaceae subfam. pooideae |
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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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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.) |
The subfamily Pooideae includes approximately 3300 species, making it the largest subfamily in the Poaceae. It reaches its greatest diversity in cool temperate and boreal regions, extending across the tropics only in high mountains. The circumscription and relationships of tribes within the Pooideae are unsettled (see, for example, Catalan et al. 1997, 2004; Soreng and Davis 1998). In this flora, some previously recognized tribes have been combined with the Poeae. Recognition of some of these as subtribes is well supported; among these is the Hainardieae Greuter (which, at the subtribal level, is called the Parapholiinae Caro). Members of other traditional tribal groupings, such as the Aveneae Dumort., appear to be widely dispersed within the Poeae sensu lato. Further work will probably support the division of the expanded Poeae into additional tribes; there is as yet no clear indication as to what the boundaries of such tribes should be. (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. 57. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Triticeae > Elymus | Poaceae | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Name authority | L. | Benth. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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