Panicum anceps
Plants perennial; conspicuously rhizomatous, rhizomes short or elongate, stout, scaly. Culms 30-130 cm, terete to slightly compressed. Sheaths laterally compressed, glabrous or sparsely to densely pilose or villous, especially at the summit; ligules less than 0.5 mm, membranous, erose, often brownish; blades 10-50 cm long, 4-12 mm wide, erect, adaxial surfaces pilose at least basally, glabrous or pilose abaxially. Panicles 10-40 cm, 1/4 - 2/3 as wide as long, well-exserted at anthesis; branches relatively few, stiffly spreading or ascending; ultimate branchlets 1-sided; pedicels 0.1-3 mm, scabridulous to scabrous, appressed. Spikelets 2.3-3.9 mm, narrowly ellipsoid to ovoid, usually subsessile, usually pale to yellowish-green, glabrous, often falcate and gaping at the apices, rarely lanceolate, densely crowded on short, appressed branchlets, set obliquely on short pedicels. Lower glumes A-A as long as the spikelets, 3-veined, keels scabrous, apices acute; upper glumes and lower lemmas subequal, keeled, beaked, usually gaping at the apices; lower florets sterile; lower paleas subequal to the lower lemmas; upper florets 1.5-2.2 mm long, about 1 mm wide, 2/5 – 3/4 as long as the spikelets, apices with a tuft of minute, thick hairs; upper lemmas thick, stiff, clasping the upper paleas throughout their length. 2n = 18, 36.
Distribution
Del., D.C., W.Va., Fla., N.J., Tex., La., Tenn., N.C., S.C., Pa., N.Y., Va., Ala., Ark., Ill., Ga., Ind., Iowa, Md., Kans., Okla., Ohio, Mo., Miss., Ky.
Discussion
Panicum anceps grows in low, moist, primarily sandy areas, pine savannahs, the borders of flood-plain swamps, mesic woodlands, roadsides, and upland pine-hardwood forests. It is restricted to the United States.
Selected References
None.
Key
| 1 | Spikelets 2.7-3.9 mm long, often clearly falcate; rhizomes relatively short and stout | Panicum anceps subsp. anceps |
| 1 | Spikelets 2.3-2.8 mm long, not clearly falcate; rhizomes relatively long and slender | Panicum anceps subsp. rhizomatum |