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Taiwan Gramineae | Family List | Poaceae

Brachiaria (Trin.) Griseb., Fl. Ross. 4(14): 469. 1853.

巴拉草屬

Brachiaria mutica
leaf cs section

Credit: cs kuoh

Annuals or perennials; clums erect, ascending to creeping, sometimes floating; solid or hollow. Leaves hairy or glabrous; ligule very short, long-ciliate, or a fringe of hairs; blades linear to ovate-lanceolate, broad at base, with acute apex. Inflorescence composed of racemosely arranged spike-like racemes; main axis terminating in a raceme or in apical part with a few spikelets, racemes often secund, lower part sometimes shortly branched. Spikelets falling as a whole, solitary in upper part of raceme, in lower part mostly in unequally pedicelate pairs; sometimes solitary (than in a biseriate raceme), but sometimes lower part in clusters of 3 or more, terete or dorsally compressed, oblong to ovate, 2-flowered; rachilla not produced; glumes and lower lemma herbaceous; lower glume nearly as long as spikelet or much shorter, opaque margins, slightly shorter than spikelet, smooth or finely tuberculate, mucronate or not; upper palea of same texture, embraced all around by margins of upper lemma; stamens 3; ovary glabrous, style 2, free, stigmas plumose, exerted laterally.

About 100 species, distributed mainly in the tropical Old World, 4 species in Taiwan.


KEY TO SPECIES

1 Culms stout, 5-8 mm in diam.; racemes more than 10 cm long   Brachiaria mutica
+ Culms slender, less than 3 mm in diam.; racemes less than 5 cm long.   (2)
       
2 (1) Spikelets 3.1-4.3 mm long, narrowly elliptic   Brachiaria subquadripara
+ Spikelets 1.6-2.9 mm long, ovate.   (3)
       
3 (2) Lower glume 0-1-veined; spikelets paired   Brachiaria reptans
+ Lower glume 3-veined; spikelets solitary   Brachiaria villosa

Lower Taxa


 

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