Flora of North America species comparison

The green links below add additional plants to the comparison table. Blue links lead to other Web sites.
enable glossary links

Glyceria elata

fowl manna grass, tall mannagrass
Habit Plants perennial.
Culms

75-150 cm tall, 2.5-8 mm thick, spongy, decumbent and rooting at the lower nodes.
Sheaths

scabridulous or hirtellous, not or weakly keeled;

ligules 2.5-4(6) mm, truncate to acute, erose, puberulent;

blades 19-40+ mm long, 6-12(15) mm wide, abaxial surfaces smooth or scabridulous, adaxial surfaces usually scabrous, sometimes scabridulous.
Panicles

15-30 cm long, 12-30 cm wide, pyramidal, open;

branches 12-17 cm, divergent to drooping, lax, with 30-50+ spikelets;

pedicels 0.3-5 mm.
Spikelets

3-6 mm long, 1.5-2.8 mm wide, laterally compressed, oval in side view, with 3-4(6) florets.
Glumes

1-1.5(2) times longer than wide, narrowing beyond midlength, veins terminating below the apical margins, apices obtuse to rounded;

lower glumes 0.7-1.5 mm;

upper glumes 1-1.5 mm;

rachilla internodes 0.5-0.6 mm;

lemmas 1.7-2.2 mm, oval in dorsal view, 5-7-veined, veins raised throughout, scabridulous, apices rounded, prow-shaped;

paleas subequal to or often slightly longer than the lemmas, lengths 2.4-3 times widths, oval in dorsal view, keels not winged, tips pointing towards each other, apices narrowly notched between the keels;

anthers 2, 0.5-0.8 mm.
Caryopses

0.8-1.5 mm long, 0.5-0.7 mm wide;

hila as long as the caryopses.
2n

= 20.

Glyceria elata
Distribution
from USDA
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Glyceria elata grows in wet meadows and shady moist woods, from British Columbia east to Alberta and south to California and New Mexico. It is not known from Mexico. The anomalous record from Georgia may represent an inadvertent introduction. It is very similar to, and sometimes confused with, G. striata, but the two sometimes grow together and show no evidence of hybridization. Their differences in growth habit and stature are evident in the field. Molecular data (Whipple et al. [in press]) confirm that G. elata and G. striata are distinct, closely related entities.

Glyceria elata is also sometimes confused with G. grandis. It differs in having rounded glumes with veins that terminate below the apices, more readily disarticulating florets, and greener lemmas with more prow-shaped apices, as well as in having paleal keel tips that point towards each other. In its overall aspect, it also resembles G. pulchella, but has somewhat more lax panicle branches than that species, in addition to smaller spikelets and florets.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 24, p. 79.
Parent taxa Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Meliceae > Glyceria > sect. Striatae
Sibling taxa
G. acutiflora, G. alnasteretum, G. borealis, G. canadensis, G. declinata, G. fluitans, G. grandis, G. leptostachya, G. maxima, G. melicaria, G. notata, G. nubigena, G. obtusa, G. pulchella, G. septentrionalis, G. striata, G. ×occidentalis
Name authority (Nash) M.E. Jones
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



Type/paste one or more Latin names into the boxes above; matching taxa will show up below the box as you type. You can use the up/down arrow keys to move through the list.

(If the plant you're looking for doesn't show up in the auto-complete list, that means it either isn't described in Flora of North America yet, or it's listed under a synonym. And please note that Flora of North America is still missing several plant families, including Fabaceae, Apiaceae, Boraginaceae, and Polemoniaceae.)

Choose a data source: Flora of North America, OregonFlora, UW Burke Herbarium

The species comparison tool is brought to you by:
Northwest Wildflowers