14. Poaceae Tribe BROMEAE
雀麦族 que mai zu
Authors: Liang Liu, Shou-liang Chen, Guanghua Zhu, Klaus Ammann & Sylvia M. Phillips
Annual or perennial. Leaf sheaths often tubular with connate margins; leaf blades linear; ligule membranous. Inflorescence a panicle, large and open or contracted. Spikelets all alike, florets several to many with the uppermost reduced, laterally compressed, disarticulating below each floret; glumes persistent, shorter than lowest lemma, entire; lemmas herbaceous to leathery, keeled or rounded, 5–13-veined, apex ± 2-lobed, with straight or recurved subapical awn, rarely awnless; lodicules glabrous; ovary with an apical hairy lobed appendage, stigmas subterminal, plumose. Caryopsis narrowly ellipsoid to linear, hollowed on hilar face, embryo small, hilum linear. Leaf anatomy non-Kranz; microhairs absent; starch grains of endosperm simple, rounded. x = 7.
Two or three genera and ca. 150 species: mainly in temperate regions of the N hemisphere; two genera and 59 species (11 endemic, at least three introduced) in China.
Bromeae resembles Poeae morphologically, but is characterized by the distinctive, hairy, apical appendage on the ovary, persisting on the mature grain. The simple, rounded starch grains in the endosperm are another unusual feature, linking the tribe to Triticeae.
