Eremopoa

Plants annual. Culms 5-60 cm. Sheaths open for most of their length; auricles absent; ligules glabrous; blades flat or convolute. Inflorescences panicles; branches glabrous, scabrous, some branches longer than 1 cm, some pedicels longer than 3 mm, usually less than 1 mm thick, flexible. Spikelets pedicellate, terete to slightly laterally compressed, with (1)2 to many florets, fertile florets (1)2-6, distal florets vestigial; rachillas straight or slightly bowed, scabrous or puberulent; disarticulation above the glumes and beneath the florets. Glumes unequal in length, subequal in width, usually shorter than the adjacent lemmas, unawned; lower glumes 1-veined; upper glumes 3-veined; calluses short, blunt, glabrous; lemmas lanceolate, glabrous or the bases slightly pilose, 5-veined, veins converging distally, apices not mucronate, unawned; paleas shorter than the lemmas; lodicules 2, free, glabrous; anthers 3; ovaries glabrous. Caryopses shorter than the lemmas, concealed at maturity, linear, adhering to the lemmas and/or paleas. x = 7.

Discussion

Eremopoa is a genus of two to six species that are native from the eastern Mediterranean to western China.

Selected References

Stevenson, G.A. 1965. Notes on the more recently adventive flora of the Brandon area, Manitoba. Canad. Field-Naturalist 79:174-177.

Lower Taxa

Eremopoa altaica