Eragrostis secundiflora |
Eragrostis spicata |
|
---|---|---|
red lovegrass |
spike lovegrass |
|
Habit | Plants perennial; cespitose, with innovations, without rhizomes, not glandular. | Plants perennial; cespitose, with innovations, without rhizomes. |
Culms | 30-75 cm, erect, glabrous below. |
75-100 cm, erect, glabrous. |
Sheaths | mostly glabrous, hairy at the apices, hairs to 4 mm; ligules 0.2-0.3 mm; blades 10-25(40) cm long, 1-5 mm wide, involute, glabrous abaxially, scabridulous adaxially, sometimes also sparsely pilose. |
hirtellous on the margins when immature, apices glabrous or hairy shorter than 0.5 mm; ligules 0.2-0.3 mm; blades 20-40 cm long, 2-5(6) mm wide, flat to involute, glabrous abaxially, scabrous adaxially. |
Panicles | (3)5-30 cm long, 1-15 cm wide, from narrowly oblong, glomerate, and interrupted below to ovate and open; primary branches 0.5-12(16) cm, appressed or diverging up to 40° from the rachises, stiff; pulvini glabrous or sparsely hairy; pedicels 0-1(3) mm, appressed, flattened. |
22-40 cm long, 0.3-0.6 cm wide, spikelike, dense; primary branches shorter than 1.2 cm, closely appressed, spikelet-bearing to the base; pulvini glabrous; pedicels 0.1-0.6 mm, mostly appressed, hirtellous. |
Spikelets | 6-16(23) cm long, 2.4-5 mm wide, ovate to linear-elliptic, flattened, stramineous, with reddish-purple margins or completely reddish-purple, with 10-45 florets; disarticulation basipetal, florets falling intact and before the glumes. |
1.4-2.2 mm long, 0.9-1.2 mm wide, ovate, stramineous to light greenish, with 2-3 florets; disarticulation basipetal, in the rachilla below the individual florets or at the base of the florets, glumes persistent. |
Glumes | ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, membranous; lower glumes 1.7-3 mm; upper glumes 2.2-4 mm, apices acuminate; lemmas 2-6 mm, ovate, membranous to leathery, apices usually acuminate or attenuate, sometimes acute; paleas 1.5-3 mm, membranous to leathery, narrower than the lemmas, apices obtuse, sometimes bifid; anthers 2, 0.2-0.5 mm, brownish. |
elliptic to ovate, hyaline, keels ciliolate; lower glumes 0.7-1 mm; upper glumes 0.9-1.3 mm, apices obtuse; lemmas 1.5-2.1 mm, ovate, membranous to hyaline, apices acute to obtuse; paleas 1.1-1.6 mm, hyaline, not wider than the lemmas, apices obtuse; anthers 2, 0.3-0.4 mm, reddish-brown. |
Caryopses | 0.8-1.3 mm, ellipsoid, somewhat laterally flattened, smooth, reddish-brown. |
0.7-1 mm, ellipsoid, somewhat ventrally flattened, smooth to faintly striate, reddish-brown. |
2n | = 40. |
= 40. |
Eragrostis secundiflora |
Eragrostis spicata |
|
Distribution |
AL; AR; CA; CO; FL; GA; KS; LA; MO; MS; NC; NE; NM; OK; SC; TN; TX; VA
|
TX |
Discussion | There are two subspecies of E. secundiflora; plants from the Flora region belong to E. secundiflora subsp. oxylepis (Torrey) S.D. Koch. They grow in sandy soils, dunes, grasslands, beaches, and roadsides of the southern United States and northern Mexico, at 0-1000 m. Eragrostis secundiflora J. Presl subsp. secundiflora grows in Mexico and Central and South America. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Eragrostis spicata grows in moist areas in prairies, usually in deep, sandy, clay loam soils, at 0-70 m. It is native from southern Texas to Mexico and in Paraguay and Argentina. In North America, it grows with Andropogon, Quercus stellata, Prosopsis glandulosa, and Acacia. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 25, p. 99. | FNA vol. 25. |
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Chloridoideae > tribe Cynodonteae > Eragrostis | Poaceae > subfam. Chloridoideae > tribe Cynodonteae > Eragrostis |
Sibling taxa | ||
Name authority | J. Presl | Vasey |
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