Melica frutescens |
Melica |
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tall melica, woody melic, woody melicgrass |
melic, melicgrass, oniongrass |
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Habit | Plants densely cespitose, not rhizomatous. | Plants perennial; cespitose or soboliferous, not or only shortly rhizomatous. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Culms | 60-200 cm, not forming corms, often branched from the lower nodes; internodes smooth. |
(4)9-250 cm, sometimes forming a basal corm; nodes and internodes usually glabrous. |
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Sheaths | glabrous, sometimes scabridulous, sometimes purplish; ligules 2.5-9 mm; blades 2-5 mm wide, abaxial sufaces scabridulous, adaxial surfaces puberulent. |
closed almost to the top; auricles sometimes present; ligules thinly membranous, erose to lacerate, usually glabrous, those of the lower leaves shorter than those of the upper leaves; blades flat or folded, glabrous or hairy, particularly on the adaxial surfaces, sometimes scabrous. |
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Panicles | 12-40 cm; branches 3.5-9 cm, appressed, with 5-15 spikelets; pedicels straight; disarticulation above the glumes. |
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Inflorescences | terminal panicles; primary branches often appressed; secondary branches appressed or divergent; pedicels either more or less straight or sharply bent below the spikelets, scabrous to strigose distally; disarticulation below the glumes in species with sharply bent pedicels, above the glumes in other species. |
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Spikelets | 9-18 mm, with 3-5 bisexual florets; rachilla internodes 1-1.3 mm, not swollen when fresh, not wrinkled when dry. |
with 1-7 bisexual florets, terminating in a sterile structure, the rudiment, composed of 1-4 sterile florets; rudiments sometimes morphologically distinct from the bisexual florets, sometimes similar but smaller. |
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Glumes | membranous or chartaceous, distal margins wide, translucent; lower glumes 1-9-veined; upper glumes 1-11-veined; calluses glabrous; lemmas membranous basally, sometimes becoming coriaceous at maturity, glabrous or with hairs, (4)5-15-veined, usually unawned, sometimes awned, awns to 12 mm, straight; paleas from 1/2 as long as to almost equaling the lemmas, keels usually ciliate; lodicules fused into a single, collarlike structure extending 1/2 - 2/3 around the base of the ovaries; anthers (2)3. |
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Lower glumes | 7-12 mm long, 2-3 mm wide, 5-7-veined; upper glumes 8-15 mm long, 2.5-3.5 mm wide, 5-7-veined; lemmas 8-11 mm, glabrous, chartaceous for the distal 1/3 or more, 7-9-veined, sometimes purplish basally, veins inconspicuous, apices rounded to acute, unawned; paleas about 3/4 the length of the lemmas; anthers 3, 1-2 mm; rudiments 2-6 mm, blunt, enclosed in empty lemmas resembling those of the bisexual florets. |
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Caryopses | usually 2-3 mm, smooth, glabrous, longitudinally furrowed, falling from the floret when mature, x = 9. |
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2n | = 18. |
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Melica frutescens |
Melica |
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Distribution |
AZ; CA
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AK; AL; AR; AZ; CA; CO; DC; FL; GA; IA; ID; IL; IN; KS; KY; LA; MD; MI; MN; MO; MS; MT; NC; NE; NJ; NM; NV; NY; OH; OK; OR; PA; SC; SD; TN; TX; UT; VA; WA; WI; WV; WY; AB; BC; ON; QC; SK |
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Discussion | Melica frutescens grows from 300-1500 m in the dry hills and canyons of southern California, Arizona, and adjacent Mexico. Boyle (1945) stated that its seeds remain viable longer than those of other North American species of Melica; he gave no information on how long. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Melica includes approximately 80 species, which grow in all temperate regions of the world except Australia, usually in shady woodlands on dry stony slopes (Mejia-Saules and Bisby 2003). The species are relatively nutritious, but are rarely sufficiently abundant to be important as forage. Nineteen species of Melica grow in the Flora region. Two European species are grown as ornamentals in North America. Many of the seventeen native species merit such use. Several proposals have been made for dividing Melica into smaller units. American taxonomists have tended to favor Thurber's (1880) recognition of two subgenera: Melica and Bromelica. In subg. Melica, the pedicels are straight and disarticulation is above the glumes; in subg. Bromelica, the pedicels are sharply bent and the spikelets disarticulate below the glumes. Hempel (1970) recognized three subgenera in Melica, but his groups do not correspond well to the pattern of morphological variation seen in North America. More recently, Mejia-Saules and Bisby (2003) examined the variation in lemma silica bodies and hooked papillae within Melica. Their results are not consistent with either Thurber's or Hempel's treatment, but provide some support for Papp's (1928) recognition of two groups, based on the presence or absence of hairs on the lemmas and the compression of the spikelets. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 24, p. 91. | FNA vol. 24, p. 88. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Meliceae > Melica | Poaceae > subfam. Pooideae > tribe Meliceae | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Name authority | Scribn. | L. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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