Eragrostis mexicana |
Eragrostis mexicana subsp. mexicana |
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giant helleborine, Mexican love grass, Orcutt's lovegrass |
Mexican lovegrass, New Mexico lovegrass |
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Habit | Plants annual; cespitose, without innovations. | |||||
Culms | 10-130 cm, erect, sometimes geniculate, glabrous, sometimes with a ring of glandular depressions below the nodes. |
and sheaths sometimes with glandular depressions. |
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Sheaths | sometimes with glandular pits, pilose near the apices and on the collars, hairs to 4 mm, papillose-based; ligules 0.2-0.5 mm, ciliate; blades 5-25 cm long, 2-7(9) mm wide, flat, abaxial surfaces glabrous, adaxial surfaces scabridulous, occasionally pubescent near the base. |
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Panicles | (5)10-40 cm long, (2)4-18 cm wide, ovate, rachises angled and channeled; primary branches 3-12(15) cm, solitary to whorled, appressed or diverging to 80° from the rachises; secondary branches somewhat appressed; pulvini glabrous; pedicels 1-6(7) mm, almost appressed to narrowly divergent, stiff. |
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Spikelets | (4)5-10(11) mm long, 0.7-2.4 mm wide, ovate to linear-lanceolate, gray-green to purplish, with 5-11(15) florets; disarticulation acropetal. |
1.5-2.4 mm wide, ovate to oblong in outline. |
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Glumes | subequal, 0.7-2(2.3) mm, ovate to lanceolate, membranous; lemmas 1.2-2.4 mm, ovate, membranous, glabrous or with a few hairs, gray-green, lateral veins evident, often greenish, apices acute; paleas 1-2.2 mm, hyaline, keels scabrous, apices obtuse to truncate; anthers 3, 0.2-0.5 mm, purplish. |
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Lower glumes | 1.2-2.3 mm; sum of spikelet width and lower glume length 2.7-4.7 mm. |
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Caryopses | 0.5-0.8(1) mm, ovoid to rectangular-prismatic, laterally compressed, shallowly to deeply grooved on the adaxial surface, striate, reddish-brown, distal 2/3 opaque. |
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2n | = 60. |
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Eragrostis mexicana |
Eragrostis mexicana subsp. mexicana |
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Distribution |
AZ; CA; CO; DE; FL; IA; ID; IL; IN; MA; MD; ME; ND; NM; NV; OR; SC; TX; UT; WA; WI; BC; ON
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Discussion | Eragrostis mexicana grows along roadsides, near cultivated fields, and in disturbed open areas, at 100-3000 m. It is native to the Americas, its native range extending from the southwestern United States through Mexico, Central and northern South America, to Argentina. Within the Flora region, it has been introduced beyond its native range, often becoming an established part of the flora. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Eragrostis mexicana subsp. mexicana grows from Ontario through the midwestern United States to California, South Carolina, and Texas and southwards to Mexico. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 25, p. 78. | FNA vol. 25, p. 78. | ||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Chloridoideae > tribe Cynodonteae > Eragrostis | Poaceae > subfam. Chloridoideae > tribe Cynodonteae > Eragrostis > Eragrostis mexicana | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Synonyms | E. neomexicana | |||||
Name authority | (Hornem.) Link | unknown | ||||
Web links |
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