银鳞茅 yin lin mao

Annual. Culms usually solitary, erect, slender, 20–60 cm tall. Leaf sheaths thin, soft, smooth, loosely overlapping; leaf blades thin, 4–12 cm × 4–10 mm, adaxial surface and margins scabridulous, apex acute; ligule 3–6 mm, subacute. Panicle open, erect, broadly ovate in outline, 5–10 cm, with many pendant spikelets; branches mostly paired, very slender, obliquely spreading, scabrid; pedicels hairlike, mostly longer than spikelets, flexuous. Spikelets broadly ovate, 3–5 × ca. 4 mm, pale green, florets 3–8; glumes broad, 2–2.5 mm, 3–5-veined, apex rounded; lemmas very broadly ovate, wider than long, lowest 1.5–2 mm, 7–9-veined, back smooth and glossy or pubescent, membranous margins very broad; palea ovate, slightly shorter than lemma, back appressed pubescentor marginal hairs spreading and fringing keels, keels almost wingless, glabrous. Anthers ca. 0.4 mm. 2n = 10.

Gardens, cultivated. Fujian, Guizhou, Jiangsu, Taiwan, Zhejiang (Hangzhou Shi) [N Africa, SW Asia, S Europe].

This is a ornamental grass with a delicate panicle of many small, rounded spikelets.