Desmazeria

Plants annual. Culms to 60 cm, procumbent to erect, sparingly branched at the base. Leaves basal and cauline; sheaths open, glabrous; auricles absent; ligules longer than wide, acute; blades linear, usually flat, sometimes convolute when dry, glabrous. Inflorescences terminal, racemes or panicles, usually with 1 branch per node; branches stiff, not secund, pedicels 0.5-3 mm. Spikelets subsessile, tangential to the rachises, lanceolate to ovate, laterally compressed, with 4-25 florets, distal florets reduced; disarticulation above the glumes, beneath the florets; rachillas not prolonged beyond the base of the distal floret. Glumes unequal to subequal, shorter than or subequal to the adjacent lemmas, 1-5-veined, unawned; calluses blunt, rounded, glabrous; lemmas narrowly elliptic, coriaceous at maturity, inconspicuously 5-veined, glabrous, sometimes scabridulous towards the apices, apices acute to obtuse, sometimes bifid, often mucronate, unawned; paleas about as long as the lemmas, 2-veined; lodicules 2, free, lanceolate; anthers 3, only slightly exserted at anthesis; ovaries glabrous. Caryopses shorter than the lemmas, concealed at maturity, ellipsoid-oblong, dorsally flattened, falling with the paleas; hila about 1/10 as long as the caryopses, ovate, x = 7.

Discussion

Desmazeria has six or seven species, all of which are native around the Mediterranean. There are two species in the Flora region, one established as a weed and one introduced as an ornamental.

One or two genera have sometimes been segregated from Desmazeria; current opinion favors the treatment presented here.

Selected References

Hitchcock, A.S. 1951. Manual of the Grasses of the United States, ed. 2, rev. A. Chase. U.S.D.A. Miscellaneous Publication No. 200. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. 1051 pp.

Stace, C.A. 1978. Notes on Cutandia and related genera. Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 76:350-352.

Lower Taxa

Desmazeria rigida, Desmazeria sicula

Key

1	Lemmas 2-3 mm long, rounded on the back or weakly keeled distally; anthers 0.4-0.6 mm long; inflorescences usually panicles, sometimes racemes	Desmazeria rigida
1	Lemmas 3.5-4.5 mm long, strongly keeled; anthers 0.8-1.4 mm long; inflorescences racemes	Desmazeria sicula