Eragrostis lugens |
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mourning lovegrass |
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Habit | Plants perennial; cespitose, with innovations, without rhizomes, not glandular. |
Culms | 30-70 cm, erect, sometimes geniculate, glabrous below the nodes. |
Sheaths | usually mostly glabrous, summits hairy, hairs 2-5 mm, never papillose-based; ligules 0.2-0.3 mm; blades (4)8-22 cm long, 1-3.5 mm wide, involute to flat, both surfaces glabrous, margins sometimes with scattered hairs, hairs to 7 mm. |
Panicles | 16-28 cm long, 10-21 cm wide, ovate, open; primary branches 0.6-15 cm, diverging up to 100° from the rachises, naked basally; pulvini hairy; pedicels 1.4-5(7) mm, diverging, wiry, present on all spikelets. |
Spikelets | 2-4.5(5) mm long, 0.5-1(1.3) mm wide, narrowly lanceolate, plumbeous to reddish-purple, with 2-7 florets; disarticulation acropetal, paleas persistent. |
Glumes | broadly ovate to narrowly lanceolate, hyaline, sometimes reddish-purple; lower glumes 0.6-1 mm; upper glumes 1.1-1.4 mm, usually broader than the lower glumes; lemmas 1.2-1.8 mm, broadly ovate, mostly membranous but the distal margins hyaline, lateral veins inconspicuous, apices acute; paleas 1.1-1.7 mm, membranous to hyaline, apices obtuse; anthers 3, 0.2-0.7 mm, reddish-purple. |
Caryopses | 0.5-0.6 mm, obovoid to somewhat prism-shaped, terete to somewhat laterally compressed, sometimes with a weak adaxial groove, finely striate, usually opaque, faintly reddish-brown to whitish. |
2n | = 40, 80, ca. 108. |
Eragrostis lugens |
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Distribution |
AL; AR; FL; GA; LA; MO; MS; NC; OK; SC; TN; TX |
Discussion | Eragrostis lugens grows on sandy dunes and along river banks, at 1-300 m. Its range extends from the southern United States to Peru and Argentina. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 25, p. 95. |
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Chloridoideae > tribe Cynodonteae > Eragrostis |
Sibling taxa | |
Name authority | Nees |
Web links |