Flora of North America species comparison

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Panicum urvilleanum

desert panicgrass, silky panic grass
Habit Plants perennial.
Culms

50-100 cm, erect, solitary or in small tufts from stout, scaly, creeping to vertical rhizomes or stolons, simple or branching at the base;

nodes densely villous.
Sheaths

densely villous;

ligules membranous, ciliate, hairs 1.5-2 mm;

blades 20-60 cm long, 4-10 mm wide, ascending to spreading, strigose to subglabrous, flat basally, tapering to a long, involute point.
Panicles

20-30 cm long, 3-9 cm wide, narrow, shortly exserted;

branches slender, ascending;

secondary branches and pedicels 1-4 mm, crowded, ascending to appressed.
Spikelets

5-7 mm, densely villous, hairs silvery or tawny-white.
Lower glumes

about 3/4 the length of the spikelets, 7-11-veined;

upper glumes and lower lemmas 7-15-veined;

lower florets staminate;

lower paleas about as long as the lower lemmas;

upper florets striate, margins of the upper lemmas villous, hairs white;

lodicules very large.
2n

= 36.

Panicum urvilleanum
Distribution
from FNA
AZ; CA
[WildflowerSearch map]
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Panicum urvilleanum grows on desert sand dunes and in creosote bush scrubland in the Mojave and Colorado desert regions of southern California, southern Nevada, and western Arizona. It also grows in Peru, Chile, and Argentina.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 25, p. 475.
Parent taxa Poaceae > subfam. Panicoideae > tribe Paniceae > Panicum > subg. Panicum > sect. Urvilleana
Sibling taxa
P. amarum, P. anceps, P. antidotale, P. bergii, P. bisulcatum, P. brachyanthum, P. bulbosum, P. capillare, P. capillarioides, P. coloratum, P. dichotomiflorum, P. diffusum, P. flexile, P. ghiesbreghtii, P. gymnocarpon, P. hallii, P. hemitomon, P. hirsutum, P. hirticaule, P. lacustre, P. miliaceum, P. mohavense, P. obtusum, P. paludosum, P. philadelphicum, P. plenum, P. psilopodium, P. repens, P. rigidulum, P. tenerum, P. trichoides, P. verrucosum, P. virgatum
Name authority Kunth
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).



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