Melica porteri |
Melica ciliata |
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Porter melic, Porter's melic, Porter's melicgrass |
ciliate melic, hairy melic, hairy melicgrass, silky melic, silky-spike melic |
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Habit | Plants not or loosely cespitose, shortly rhizomatous. | Plants cespitose, sometimes shortly rhizomatous. | ||||
Culms | 55-100 cm, not forming corms; internodes smooth, basal internodes not thickened. |
20-60(100) cm, not forming corms. |
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Sheaths | often scabrous on the keels, otherwise smooth; ligules 1-7 mm; blades 2-5 mm wide, both surfaces glabrous, scabridulous. |
glabrous or shortly and sparsely pubescent; ligules 1-4 mm; blades 7-15 cm long, 1-4 mm wide, usually involute. |
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Panicles | 13-25 cm; branches 1-9 cm, straight and appressed or flexible and ascending to strongly divergent, with 1-12 spikelets; pedicels sharply bent below the spikelets; disarticulation below the glumes. |
4-8(25) cm, narrowly cylindrical, lax, pale; branches 1.5-4 cm, appressed to ascending, with 3-12(15) spikelets; pedicels sharply bent below the spikelets; disarticulation below the glumes. |
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Spikelets | 8-16 mm long, 1.5-5 mm wide, parallel-sided when mature, with 2-5 bisexual florets; rachilla internodes 1.9-2.1 mm. |
6-8 mm, with 1 bisexual floret, sometimes purple-tinged. |
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Glumes | green, pale, or purplish-tinged; lower glumes 3.5-6 mm long, 2-3 mm wide, 3-5-veined; upper glumes 5-8 mm long, 2-3 mm wide, 5-veined; lemmas 6-10 mm, glabrous, chartaceous on the distal 1/3, 5-11-veined, veins conspicuous, apices rounded to acute, unawned; paleas about 2/3 the length of the lemmas; anthers 1-2.5 mm; rudiments 1.8-5 mm, acute to acuminate, resembling the bisexual florets. |
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Lower glumes | 4-6 mm long, 1.5-2.5 mm wide, ovate, 1-5-veined, acute; upper glumes 6-8 mm long, about 1.5 mm wide, lanceolate, acute to acuminate; lemmas 4-6.5 mm, lanceolate, 7-9-veined, papillose, margins and marginal veins pubescent, hairs 3.5-5 mm, not twisted; rudiments 1-1.7 mm, ovoid, not resembling the bisexual florets. |
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2n | = 18. |
=18, 36. |
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Melica porteri |
Melica ciliata |
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Distribution |
AZ; CO; KS; NM; TX; UT
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WA |
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Discussion | Melica porteri grows on rocky slopes and in open woods, often near streams. It grows from Colorado and Arizona to central Texas and northern Mexico. Living plants are sometimes confused with Bouteloua curtipendula; the similarity is superficial. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Melica ciliata is grown as an ornamental in North America and is not known to have escaped. It is native to Europe, northern Africa, and southwestern Asia, where it grows on damp to somewhat dry soils. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 24, p. 98. | FNA vol. 24, p. 100. | ||||
Parent taxa | ||||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Name authority | Scribn. | L. | ||||
Web links |