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

Paspalum malacophyllum

rib paspalum
Habit Plants perennial; cespitose, sometimes with short rhizomes.
Culms

90-200 cm, erect;

nodes sunken, glabrous or pubescent, brown.
Sheaths

pubescent;

ligules 4-5 mm, membranous, brown, acute;

blades 12-40 cm long, 8-35 mm wide, flat or conduplicate, pubescent below, glabrous above, distinctly pubescent basally.
Panicles

terminal, with 8-25 racemosely arranged branches;

branches 1-8 cm, divergent to erect;

branch axes 1-1.2 mm wide, margins scabrous, terminating in a spikelet;

pedicels 0.2-0.4 and 0.5-1.2 mm long, flattened, scabrous.
Spikelets

1.8-2 mm, paired, appressed to or divergent from the branch axes, oblong-elliptic, white to stramineous.
Glumes

absent;

lower lemmas glabrous, ribbed over the veins, sulcate between, 5-veined, margins entire;

upper lemmas as long as the lower ones, longitudinally papillose-striate, glabrous, pale-colored.
Upper

florets white to stramineous.
2n

= 40, 60.

Paspalum malacophyllum
Distribution
from FNA
FL; GA; TX
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Paspalum malacophyllum is native from Mexico to Bolivia and Argentina. It was introduced to the southern United States for forage and soil conservation, and is now established in the southeastern United States, growing in disturbed sites at scattered locations.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 25, p. 584.
Parent taxa Poaceae > subfam. Panicoideae > tribe Paniceae > Paspalum
Sibling taxa
P. acuminatum, P. almum, P. bifidum, P. blodgettii, P. boscianum, P. caespitosum, P. conjugatum, P. conspersum, P. convexum, P. coryphaeum, P. dilatatum, P. dissectum, P. distichum, P. fimbriatum, P. floridanum, P. hartwegianum, P. intermedium, P. laeve, P. langei, P. laxum, P. lividum, P. minus, P. modestum, P. monostachyum, P. nicorae, P. notatum, P. paniculatum, P. pleostachyum, P. plicatulum, P. praecox, P. pubiflorum, P. quadrifarium, P. racemosum, P. repens, P. scrobiculatum, P. setaceum, P. unispicatum, P. urvillei, P. vaginatum, P. virgatum, P. virletii, P. wrightii
Name authority Trin.
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

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