Panicum capillare |
Panicum paludosum |
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
common panicgrass, common witchgrass, old witch grass, panic capillaire, witch grass, witch panicgrass |
aquatic panicum, Chesapeake panicgrass |
|||||
Habit | Plants annual; hirsute or hispid, hairs papillose-based, often bluish or purplish. | Plants perennial; more or less cespitose, rhizomatous or stoloniferous, free-floating or rooting in shallow water. | ||||
Culms | 15-130 cm, slender to stout, not woody, erect to decumbent, straight to zigzag, simple to profusely branched; nodes sparsely to densely pilose. |
30-150 cm tall, 3-7 mm thick, compressed, spongy, glabrous, decumbent and rooting at the lower nodes in shallow water; nodes glabrous; internodes glabrous, smooth. |
||||
Sheaths | rounded, hirsute or hispid, hairs papillose-based; ligules membranous, ciliate, cilia 0.5-1.5 mm; blades 5-40 cm long, 3-18 mm wide, linear, spreading. |
usually shorter than the internodes, not keeled, glabrous or sparsely hispid distally; ligules 1-4 mm; blades 10-40 cm long, 5-15 mm wide, flat, glabrous, contracted basally, attenuate distally, apices acute. |
||||
Panicles | 13-50 cm long, 7-24 cm wide, usually more than 1/2 as long as the plants, included at the base or exserted at maturity, disarticulating at the base of the peduncles at maturity and becoming a tumbleweed; branches spreading; pedicels 0.5-2.8 mm, scabrous, pilose. |
10-25 cm long, 5-17 cm wide, shortly exserted or included basally; primary branches 4-12 cm, ascending to spreading, secondary and higher order branches confined to the distal 2/3, pedicels 1-4 mm, sharply 3-angled, ascending to appressed. |
||||
Spikelets | 1.9-4 mm, ellipsoid to lanceoloid, often red-purple, glabrous. |
3-4 mm long, 0.8-2 mm wide, lanceolate. |
||||
Lower glumes | 0.5-0.9 mm, 1/5 – 1/3 as long as the spikelets, rounded, glabrous, truncate, weakly 1-3-veined; upper glumes and lemmas subequal, glabrous, 9-11-veined, veins prominent, apices acute to accuminate; lower paleas about 2/3 as long as the lower lemmas; lower florets sterile; upper florets 2-2.7 mm, narrowly ellipsoid, smooth, shiny, yellowish. |
|||||
Lower | florets sterile; lower glumes 1/3– 1/2 as long as the spikelets, 1-3-veined; upper glumes 1.8-3.1 mm, 7-9-veined, midveins scabridulous; lower lemmas 1.9-3 mm, extending 0.4-1.1 mm beyond the upper florets, often stiff, straight, prominently veined distally; upper florets stramineous or nigrescent, sometimes with a prominent lunate scar at the base, often disarticulating before the glumes, leaving the empty glumes and lower lemmas temporarily persisting on the panicles. |
|||||
2n | = 18. |
= 54. |
||||
Panicum capillare |
Panicum paludosum |
|||||
Distribution |
AL; AR; AZ; CA; CO; CT; DC; DE; FL; GA; IA; ID; IL; IN; KS; KY; LA; MA; MD; ME; MI; MN; MO; MS; MT; NC; ND; NE; NH; NJ; NM; NV; NY; OH; OK; OR; PA; RI; SC; SD; TN; TX; UT; VA; VT; WA; WI; WV; WY; AB; BC; MB; NB; NS; ON; PE; QC; SK; Virgin Islands
|
MD |
||||
Discussion | Panicum capillare grows in open areas, particularly in disturbed sites such as fields, pastures, roadsides, waste places, ditches, sand, and rock crevices, etc. It grows throughout temperate North America, including northern Mexico. It also grows in Bermuda, the Virgin Islands, and sporadically in South America, and has become naturalized in much of Europe and Asia. It appears to hybridize with P. philadelphicum. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Panicum paludosum is an Asian species that grows in shallow water. It has been found in Baltimore, Maryland, but may not be established there. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
||||
Key |
|
|||||
Source | FNA vol. 25. | FNA vol. 25, p. 470. | ||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Panicoideae > tribe Paniceae > Panicum > subg. Panicum > sect. Panicum | Poaceae > subfam. Panicoideae > tribe Paniceae > Panicum > subg. Panicum > sect. Dichotomiflora | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Name authority | L. | Roxb. | ||||
Web links |
|